
Qass J£H: 

Book 1 . 








[IS WORK. 
LSHERS.IL 



ECHOES 

FROM THE 

PULPIT AND PLATEORM 

OR 

LIVING TRUTHS FOR HEAD AND HEART 

ILLUSTRATED BY UPWARDS OF 

FIVE HUNDRED THRILLING ANECDOTES AND INCIDENTS, 

PERSONAL EXPERIENCES, TOUCHING HOME SCENES, 

AND STORIES OF TENDER PATHOS 

DRAWN FROM 

€i)e 25rigl)t anti £fja&p J>i&e£ of Jtife 

AS RELATED BY 

DWIGHT L. MOODY 

DURING HIS 

FORTY YEARS' EXPERIENCE AS AN EVANGELIST 

INCLUDING THE 

STORY OF MR. MOODY'S LIFE AND WORK 
By REV. CHARLES F. GOSS, D.D. 

Pastor of Mr. Moody's Chicago Church for Five Years 
INTRODUCTION 

By REV. LYMAN ABBOTT, D. D. 



i&ttperblp Jllufittatea 



WITH STEEL-PLATE AND OTHER PORTRAITS, AND MANY FINE ENGRAVINGS FROM 
ORIGINAL DESIGNS BY EMINENT ARTISTS 



SOLD ONLY BY SUBSCRIPTION 



A. D. WORTHINGTON & CO., PUBLISHERS 
HARTFORD, CONN. 



TWO COPIES RKCE1VED, 
Library of Congrat^ 
Office of tb 9 

MAP \ 9 1900 

HegliWr of Copyrlgfct* 



n 



4- 



55944 

[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED] 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1900, 

By A. D. Worthington & Company, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



SfcC JND COPY, 






D C 




THIS volume has been in course of preparation for several years, 
and nearly every line of it was in type when Mr. Moody died. 
His death neither hastened nor delayed its publication. All of 
the pictorial illustrations were in the artists' hands and were nearly 
completed; Dr. Abbott's Introduction was in type; the story of Mr. 
Moody's life, by Dr. Goss, was well along: and the steel-plate portrait 
of the great evangelist was finished, when he passed away. These 
facts are mentioned as evidence that this volume has not been hastily 
brought out simply to meet a demand caused by Mr. Moody's death. 
All that pertains to it had received the most painstaking care that 
ample time could give, long before his public career closed. 

It presents the story of Mr. Moody's life and work not only through 
the pen of one who was intimately associated with him for years — 
Rev. Dr. Goss, whose name was suggested to the Publishers by Mr. 
Moody's son — Mr. William R. Moody — to whom they had been 
referred by Mr. Moody himself, — but also through the medium of 
Mr. Moody's recorded speech, thus making it largely autobiographical. 
His best thoughts, his most touching stories, his most thrilling anec- 
dotes and incidents, together with the many personal experiences and 
reminiscences he so often and effectively told on the platform, are here 
preserved in permanent form. 

In 1896-7 Mr. Moody conducted a series of revival meetings in 
New England, the last great series which he ever conducted in the 
East. A month in Providence, another in Lowell, and two months 
in Boston, were among the notable meetings of that time. The 
preparation of this book may be said to date from that period. The 
Publishers employed an expert stenographer to report Mr. Moody's 
.sermons verbatw^-ct literatim. The Rev. W. D. Bridge was chosen for 
this important work. Of his skill, Bishop John H. Vincent said: " I 
take great pleasure in commending my old and honored friend, the 
Rev. "W. D. Bridge, my stenographic secretary for more than nine 
years. His college training and long experience have made him a 
thorough expert in everything that pertains to shorthand writing, re- 

(3) 



4 PREFACE. 

porting, etc." It is believed that Professor Bridge's reports of Mr. 
Moody's sermons are the most accurate that have been made. They 
form the basis of this volume. The aim has been to present, in con- 
nected form, the stories, illustrations, and personal experiences that Mr. 
Moody so effectively used, together with their application. When- 
ever he told a story, or related a personal experience, it was invariably 
to illustrate a great and living truth, and in this volume these truths 
stand out as beacon lights. Although Mr. Moody had an almost in- 
exhaustible fund of stories and apt illustrations, he drew very largely 
from his own experience. He never repeated them in precisely the 
same way, nor in the same words, nor did he always use them under 
the same head. Some of those told in his earlier years were narrated 
in greater detail; some were better told on one occasion than on 
another. Whenever a better version of an incident or personal 
experience could be found, than those specially reported for this 
volume, it has been used. But his earlier addresses, while perhaps 
more vigorous, lacked the smoothness — or shall we say polish? — of 
his later ones, because during the last few years of his life he broadened 
in many ways. He read and studied in certain lines to great ad- 
vantage, and his acquaintance with many distinguished men and 
women in Europe and America freed him, to some extent, from the 
limitations of his earlier years. 

Mr. Moody was desirous that printed copies of his words should 
be widely circulated. He often acknowledged from the platform his 
great obligations to the press. In Boston, in 1897, looking down upon 
the reporters' table, he said: " I want to speak a word for the papers. 
They are a great help to us. Buy papers. Buy lots of them. They 
are for sale. Religious people grumble about the newspapers and say 
they don't give enough space to sermons. When a good sermon is 
printed, buy that paper. Buy them by the hundred, and scatter them 
broadcast." And again : " And I say once more that we want to thank 
God for the reports which the press are sending out. Let us ask 
God to bless the reports more and more." He then read a letter sent 
by " a laboring man," expressing his thanks for the reports of the 
meetings in one of the papers, " which", he said, " I read every day 
on the way to and from my work." At that time the papers did not 
report Mr. Moody's sermons in full. Some gave the substance of only 
a portion of them, others made brief mention, some none at all. If 
the publication of fragments of his sermons in the daily press met with 
Mr. Moody's emphatic approval — and we have his testimony that it 
did — it is believed that the accurate and permanent form in which 
his latest words are here presented would not have been distasteful to 
him. The only full reports made during his last two months in 
Boston, in 1897, as well as those made in other cities, were made for 
this volume. When Mr. Moody knew that his words were being 
taken down verbatim, it seemed to stimulate him to still greater ex- 
ertions. He confesses to this in a remarkable incident he relates on 
page 119, when "everything went in, blunders and all." 

Mr. Moody was a rapid speaker, and when intensely in earnest, or 
carried away by the excitement of the moment, he sometimes un- 
consciously made slips of the tongue, which otherwise might not have 
occurred. In these " Echoes" obvious mistakes have been corrected; 
but with slight editing the great and living truths he so successfully 
advocated and defended for forty years before millions of eager 
listeners, are given in this volume substantially as he proclaimed them 
from the platform. 

THE PUBLISHERS. 




jfrom Jpbotograpbs, anb ©riginal Designs brawn erpressts for tbis work b£ Cbarles 
Copelanb, JE&munb 1b. Oarrett, anl> otber Eminent artists. 

i. PORTRAIT OF DWIGHT L. MOODY . . Frontispiece 

Engraved expressly for this work from a photograph made by Pierre Petit, 
Paris, in 1882, when Mr. Moody was 45 years old. The negative of this 
photograph was destroyed at Mr. Moody's request. Engraved in pure line 
and stipple by Mr. John J. Cade, New York. 

2. Ornamental Heading to Preface ...... 3 

3. Ornamental Heading to List of Illustrations ... 5 

4. Ornamental Heading to Contents 7 

5. Ornamental Heading to Rev. Lyman Abbott's Introduction 25 

6. Engraved Autograph of Rev. Lyman Abbott ... 32 

7. Ornamental Heading to Rev. Charles F. Goss's " Story 

of Mr. Moody's Life and Work" 33 

8. Where D. L. Moody was Born. The Moody Homestead 

at Northfield, Mass -34 

9. D. L. Moody as he Appeared at the Time he Removed 

from the Family Farm to Boston 37 

10. D. L. Moody at the Age of 26 45 

11. Ira D. Sankey, Mr. Moody's Yoke-Fellow, Age 35 -54 

12. D. L. Moody's House at Northfield, in Winter, Look- 

ing East 7 1 

13. Dining Room, D. L. Moody's House at Northfield . . 73 

14. The Northfield Auditorium. It has a Seating Capacity of 

three thousand 77 

15. D. L. Moody's House at Northfield, Looking South . 79 

16. D. L. Moody's Study 91 

17. Engraved Autograph of Rev. Charles F. Goss . . .112 

18. Ornamental Heading to Chapter I, with Engraved Au- 

tograph of D. L. Moody 113 

19. Portrait of D. L. Moody at the Age of 62 . . .113 

(5) 



6 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

20. A FATHER RECOGNIZING HIS LONG-LOST SON. 

DEATH OF A PRODIGAL IN A LONDON GAR- 
RET. (Full Page.) From an Original Design by 
Charles Coteland Facing 132 

" No. father, I am too far gone, I am dying ; but I can die happy in this gar- 
ret, now that I know you have forgiven me." In a little while he breathed 
his last, and out of that dark garret, from a wretched bed of straw, his soul 
rose up into the kingdom of God. 

21. AN INCIDENT IN MR. MOODY'S EARLY CAREER. 

PREACHING TO A STREET CROWD. (Full Page.) 

From an Original Design by Charles Copeland Facing 184 

" Well," I said, " we can go into the street and preach the Gospel there." 
I tried every way I could to get the church people to go into the street with 
me, but I couldn't ; then I said I would try to get the sinners. When the hour 
came I stood upon a drygoods box and I went at it. There were a lot of 
young men sneaking around the outside. 

22. A DRUNKARD SURPRISED IN A BAR-ROOM. THE 

LITTLE CARD HEADED 'MY DEAR FRIEND." 
(Full Page.) From an Original Design by Charles 
Copeland Facing 232 

He was a miserable drunkard ; his friends had left him and he was sinking 
rapidly into a drunkard's grave. When he entered the saloon a few hours 
afterwards, the little card headed "My Dear Friend" was handed to him. 
" Why," he said, sarcastically, " this is singular, I've got a friend." He read 
on : "If you will come up to the hotel to-night at 7 o'clock I should like to see 
you." 

23. REMARKABLE SCENE IN A DRUNKARD'S HOME. 

(Full Page.) From an Original Design by Edmund H. 
Garrett Facing 238 

" Mary, have we a Bible in the house? " " Oh, John," Mary said, " I hope 
you are not going to take my mother's Bible from me. Oh, John, don't pawn 
it!" "No," said John, "I don't want to pawn it." And she brought the 
Bible. The children can't understand it ; they had been used to hearing him 
curse and swear. 

24. MR. MOODY AND SOME FRIENDS PREACHING AND 

SINGING HYMNS IN HAUNTS OF VICE. (Full 

Page.) From an Original Design by Charles Copeland 

. . . Facing 246 

I don't know any work so blessed as going into saloons and preaching the 
Gospel there. If drunkards will not come to church, go down where they are, 
in the name of our God, and you will reach them. We took sixteen out of a 
saloon in that way one night, and nine of them went into the inquiry-room. If 
you say, " Oh, they will put me out," I say, " No, I have never been turned out 
of a saloon in my life." 

25. MR MOODY HOLDING A MEETING IN A COUNTRY 

SCHOOLHOUSE. A SCENE IN HIS EARLY CA- 
REER. (Full Page.) From an Original Design by 
Charles Copeland • . . Facing 280 

If I didn't get into a church, I would get up a meeting in some school- 
house. The first man who came to the meeting would bring, perhaps, an old 
dingy lantern. He would set the lantern up on the desk. Perhaps the next 
one who came in would be a woman, and she would bring out from under her 
shawl an old sperm-oil lamp. The next man would bring out of his pocket a 
tallow-dip, and he would light his match and set that up on the desk. That is 
the way we would light up the room. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 7 

26. AN INCIDENT OF THE CIVIL WAR. A LITTLE 

GIRL PLEADING WITH ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND 
HIS CABINET TO SPARE HER BROTHER'S LIFE. 
(Full Page.) From an Original Design by Edmund H. 
Garrett ......... Facing 306 

When she entered the room the President was surrounded by his counsel- 
ors, and when he saw the little country girl he asked her what she wanted. 
She told her sad, simple story — how her brother, whom her mother and father 
loved so dearly, had been sentenced to be shot; how they were mourning for 
him, and if he was to die in that way it would break their hearts. 

27. DEATH OF LITTLE ADELAIDE. MR. MOODY VISIT- 

ING A DRUNKARD'S HOME. (Full Page.) From an 
Original Design by Edmund H. Garrett . . Facing 312 

I took my little girl, four years old, and started for the home of the drowned 
child. Little Adelaide used to go to the Chicago river and gather floating 
wood for the fire. That day she had gone as usual ; she saw a piece of wood, 
a larger stick than the rest, a little way from the bank, and in stretching out 
her hand to reach it she slipped and fell into the water and was drowned. 
There were four children in the room, and the husband sat in the corner — 
drunk. 

28. IN PERIL UPON THE SEA. A THRILLING INCI- 

DENT IN MR. MOODY'S LIFE. (Full Page.) From 

an Original Design by Charles Copeland . Facing 340 

I went to my berth and lay down. I said, " I may be in Heaven when I 
awake. But I may reach Northfield." About 2.15 that morning my son came 
to my stateroom and awakened me, telling me to come on deck. There he 
pointed out in the dim distance a tiny light that we could occasionally catch a 
glimpse of as it shone over the waves as our ship rolled heavily from side to 
side. " It is our star of Bethlehem," I said, " and our prayers are answered." 

29. MR. MOODY TELLING THE SOLDIER'S WIDOW'S 

STORY IN CAMP. (Full Page.) From an Original 
Design by Charles Copeland .... Facing 374 

The father and husband was gone, but the widow and children wanted to 
pray for some one. So I went to the Bible house and bought two Bibles and 
took them with me into the army, and when in front of Richmond I told the 
widow's story. I held up one of the Bibles and said, " If there is a soldier 
here who wants to come forward and take this Bible, and have the prayers of 
that widow and those children in Chicago, will he come forward." 

30. "HERRINGS, HERRINGS, GOOD FRESH HERRINGS, 

FOR NOTHING ! " (Full Page.) From an Original 
Design by Edmund H. Garrett .... Facing 402 

" Well," said the man, " if you will cry, herrings for nothing! Good fresh 
herrings for nothing! I will pay you for them." He accepted and went on 
crying: " Herrings for nothing ! Good fresh herrings for nothing ! " But he 
couldn't get rid of a herring. He walked the whole length of the street crying 
"Herrings for nothing!" But he finally stopped and said: "I didn't know 
there were so many fools in the world." The secret was, nobody believed him. 

31. DYING ON THE BATTLEFIELD. THE PARTING OF 

TWO BROTHERS. (Full Page) From an Original 
Design by Charles Copeland .... Facing 446 

At last a bullet passed through his brother's body. Putting a knapsack 
under his head he made him as comfortable as he could, and started on. As 
he was turning away he heard his wounded brother say : " This is glorious! " 
" What is glorious ? " ' Oh, I see Christ in Heaven ! " Lying in a pool of his 
own life blood, he looked up and caught a glimpse of the glory beyond. 



8 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

32. MR. MOODY LEAVING HOME FOR THE FIRST TIME. 

(Full Page.) From an Original Design by Edmund H. 
Garrett ......... Facing 492 

But one cold day in November, — I have never liked November since, — a 
day of leaden skies and frozen ground, my brother came home, and said he had 
lound a good place for me, and I must go down and spend the winter in Green- 
field. I said I wouldn't go. But as my mother and I sat by the fire, she said : 
" Dwight, I think you will have to go. I don't think I shall be able to keep the 
family together this winter." It was a dark night for me. I didn't sleep 
much that night. I cried a great deal. The next morning after breakfast I 
took my little bundle and we started. I was about ten years old. When we 
got a mile away from the house we both sat down and cried. 

33. "ARE ALL THE CHILDREN IN?" (Full Page.) From 

an Original Design by Edmund H. Garrett . Facing 528 

Her husband was sitting by her side, as she lay dying, and he was watch- 
ing the flickering life go out, when all at once she opened her eyes, and looked 
around, and said : " Why ! it is dark." "Yes, dear." "Is it night?" "Yes, 
dear, it is night." "Are all the children in?" That dear old mother was 
living life over again. The youngest child had been in his grave twenty years; 
but the old father and husband said, " Yes, wife, they are all in." Then she 
fell asleep in Christ. 

34. "JOHN THOMPSON, YOUR FATHER WANTS YOU.' 

A FATHER SEARCHING THE HOSPITALS FOR 
HIS SON. (Full Page.) From an Original Design 
by Edmund H. Garrett Facing 558 

Going down through the hospital ward he would cry out : "John Thomp- 
son, your father wants you." The sick and wounded soldiers would lift their 
heads, and, I suppose, said to themselves, " I wish that was my father calling 
to me." He passed from one hospital to another and his voice would ring 
through the wards, "John Thompson, your father wants you." And by and 
by a wounded soldier lifted his head and said : " Here I am, father ! " 

35. THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER DISCOVERING THE 

DEAD BODY OF HIS ONLY SON. (Full Page.) From 

an Original Design by Edmund H. Garrett . Facing 602 

His fears were well founded, for there had been a terrible wreck. He 
walked along the beach, hoping to save some one who might still be alive. The 
first body that came floating toward the shore was the body of his own son ! 
He had been watching for that boy for many days, and he had been gone for 
three years. He had perished in sight of home, because his father had let his 
light go out ! 

36. Ornamental Tail-Piece, ''Good Night" .... 640 




LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY, 

By Rev. Charles F. Goss, D.D., 

Pastor of Mr. Moody'' s Chicago Church for Five Years. 

CHAPTER I. 

Dwight L. Moody's Birthplace — Death of His Father — The 
Widowed Mother and a Heavily Mortgaged Farm — The Little 
Red Schoolhouse — An Uncontrollable Love of Mischief — In- 
cidents in His School Days — Flow His Teacher Conquered 
Him — A Wanderer at Seventeen — His Advent into Real Life in 
the City of Boston — How He was Converted — Decides to go to 
Chicago — Finds Work at Last — Running Down Country 
Merchants on the Streets — Becomes Identified With a Church — 
Rebuked for His Rough and Ready Speeches — Starting a Mission 
School on His own Responsibility — An Outfit of Ragamuffins 
and Street Urchins — His Sunday-school Grows to 1,000 Pupils — 
Loses his Interest in Business — "I am working for Jesus 
Christ" — No Money, but Plenty of Friends 33 



CHAPTER II. 

Opening of the Civil War — Mr. Moody Enters into New Experi- 
ences — An Important Epoch of His Life — His Work as Chap- 
lain in the Union Army — Its Effect on His After Life — Organiz- 
ing a Church of His Own — Raising $20,000 to Build His First 
Church — His Helpers and Leaders — Sleeping on Benches or on 
the Floor — His Great Capacity for Work — " Getting the Hang " 
of Meetings — His Inexhaustible Fund of Anecdote and Story — 
Captivating Eastern Audiences — Some of His Amusing Oral 
Blunders — His Marriage and Home Life — Scraping the Flour 
Barrel at the Bottom — Getting Hold of the Bible — Discovers 
the Value of Music — Meeting Mr. Sankey for the First Time — 
The Partnership that Followed — Plans to go to England on an 
Empty Pocketbook — The Shadow of Coming Events. . . 44 

(9) 



IO CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER III. 



Mr. Moody and Mr. Sankey Sail for England — Their Arrival in Liver- 
pool — The Sorrowful News that Greeted Them — A Discouraging 
Outlook — "I Will be There to-night " — The First of the Re- 
markable Meetings in Great Britain — An Audience of Eight Per- 
sons — How Interest in the Meetings Grew — Disagreeable Critics 
and Ministerial Sharpshooters — Taking Scotland By Storm — Mr. 
Sankey's " Kist fu' o' Whustles " — The Excitement Spreads 
Among All Classes — Remarkable Scenes — Sweeping through 
Scotland and Ireland — The Evangelists Arrive in London — Mr. 
Moody Questioned by a Conference of Ministers — The Wit, 
Shrewdness, and Candor of His Replies — The Most Wonderful 
Meetings Ever Held in London — Personal Experiences — Dining 
With Mr. Gladstone — Premonition of Sudden Death — Followed 
by an Assassin — Arrest of the Would-be Murderer — Using up 
the " Best Minister in Scotland " — Farewell to London. . 57 



CHAPTER IV 



Return of the Famous Evangelists to America — Great Preparation 
for Their Home-Coming — Erection of Buildings for Immense 
Audiences — The Campaign in Eastern Cities — Sweeping 
Through the South — A Work That Never Ceased for Twenty- 
eight Years — First Steps Towards Organizing Educational In- 
stitutions at Northfield — Great Results From Small Beginnings 

— The Northfield Seminary for Girls — The Boys' School at 
Mount Hermon — Mr. Moody Grapples with Intricate Problems 

— The Summer School at Northfield — Visited by the Most 
Famous Men of the Times — Marvelous Vacation Work — Cher- 
ished Life Plans — "I'm Trying to Reproduce Myself" — Mr. 
Moody's Fervor, Energy, and Faith — ■ " I'm Awfully Concerned 
About this Matter " — A Man of Action, as well as Words — 
How He Raised the Money to Found and Support His In- 
stitutions 69 



CHAPTER V. 



Mr. Moody's Wonderful Capacity to Stand Hard and Continuous 
Labor — Always "Ready for Business" — His Disregard of 
Ordinary Laws of Health — " Have You Got Anything to Eat? " — 
His Miraculous Power to Stand Fatigue — His Intellectual and 
Moral Endowments — Looking into the Faces of More than One 



CONTENTS. j l 

Hundred Million People — His Wonderfully Retentive Mem- 
ory — A Life of Incessant Activities — How He Treated Men he 
Personally Disliked — Dropping Men as if They Were "Hot 
Coals " — His Devotion to His Friends — Standing by Henry 
Drummond — How Drummond's Death Affected Mr. Moody — 
His Great Will Power — His Humility and Modesty — Refusing 
an Offer of $25,000 for His Autobiography — Offered $10,000 by 
a Newspaper for a Two-Hours Interview — The Power of His 
Eye — Did He Possess the Gift of Hypnotism? 83 



CHAPTER VI. 



Mr. Moody's Theology — His Power as a Preacher — What he Re- 
garded the Most Fascinating Doctrine in the Bible — His Belief 
that Things Were " Going to the Bad " — Waiting for The Final 
Crash " — His Fine Sense of Humor — His Unshaken Belief in 
the Bible — His Broad Sympathies — His Oratory and Pulpit 
Power — Born With a Silver Style in His Mouth — Characteristics 
of His Platform Addresses — His Limited Vocabulary — His 
Source of Illustrations — Drawn from Real Life — "Corner 
Groceries " in Noah's Time — How he Secured the Sympathy and 
Attention of an Audience — His Intense Energy on the Plat- 
form — Conditions that Aroused His Highest Powers — His Ideal 
of Music, and the Use he Made of it — Electrical Effect of Some of 
His Sermons — Flis Last Sermon, and His Last Audience. . 93 



CHAPTER VII. 



Mr. Moody's Loyalty to the Regular Institutions of the Christian 
Church — What Might Have Happened if he had Unfurled His 
Banner — The Countless Multitudes that Would Have Flocked to 
Him — His Ability to Organize and Bring Order out of Chaos — 
How he Supported the Regular Work of the Churches — One of 
Four Men " Sent Forth by God " — His Last Meetings in Kansas 
City — Great Preparations and Enormous Crowds — His Sudden 
Illness — "Oh, I am Much Better" — Forced to Remain Away 
From a Meeting for the First Time in Forty Years — Alarming 
Symptoms — He is Sent Home in a Private Car to Northfield — 
Watching at His Bedside — Helpless, but Cheerful and Hopeful — 
"What is Going on Here?" — Nearing the End — Close of an 
Illustrious Life — Mr. Moody's Last Words — His Funeral — His 
Grave on Round Top 105 




CHAPTER I. 

SIMPLY BELIEVING, SIMPLY RECEIVING. 

An Incident in Manchester, England. — "Oh, I See It Now" — 
" I Understand You Have Been Stealing " — Calling Things 
by Their Right Names — Two Men Who Saw What they 
were Looking For — Story of a Remarkable Conversion — 
Forging His Own Chains — On the Deck of a Sinking Ship — 
"Jump Into the Lifeboat!" — The Man with Handbills — The 
Story of Little Nellie — " Help ! Help ! " — A Wicked Yorkshire 
Miner — "Don't Cry, Lass; Don't Cry" — The Silver Key and 
Tress of Auburn Hair — A Bed of Straw — " No One Cares for 
Me " — From a Dark Garret to the Kingdom of God. . . . 113 

CHAPTER II. 

THE PRODIGAL SON. 



A Noble Character — Seven Children, and No Two Alike — A Jolly 
Fellow — A Father Who was " a Little Soft " — Trying to Borrow 
a Dollar — A Scheme of the Devil — Saloon-keepers and Free 
Lunches — The Gnawings of Hunger — " Use or Lose " — A Jew 
Caring for Swine — Sowing Tares and Reaping Shame — The 
Hardest of Battles — " There Goes a Tramp" — Watching for 
His Son — Love Makes the Eyesight Keen — The Forgotten 
Speech — A Story of Mr. Moody's Early Life — A Mother's Grief 
for the Wanderer — The Little Circle By the Fireside — Tears 
and Silence — The Roar of the Storm — The Wanderer's Re- 
turn — What if there Were Two Graves There? — The Face of 
a Stranger — His Tears of Penitence Betray Him — Welcomed 

and Forgiven 136 

(12) 



CONTENTS. j^ 

CHAPTER III. 

THE NEW BIRTH. 

A Photograph of the Heart — "I Will Take Fourteen Dozen " — 
Breaking the Plate and Abusing the Artist — " Ticketed " through 
to Heaven — " My Brother is an Archdeacon " — Signing Good 
Resolutions with Blood — The Crab-apple Tree — "Can't You 
Give Me Something To Do?" — Turned Out of House and 
Home — A Personal Experience — Story of the Crane and the 
Swan — "I Want Snails " — The Descent into the Pit — No 
Such Thing as Wind — A Puzzling Question — The Mystery of 
Life — A Thrilling Incident — " He Isn't Going to Catch Me" — 
Cornering Him in One End of a Pew — Jumping Over the Backs 
of the Pews — "I Am that Nephew " — Joking at Mr. Moody's 
Expense — A Drunkard's Downfall — The Empty Cot. , . 150 

CHAPTER IV. 

SEEKING CHRIST AND FOLLOWING HIM. 

Faithful, Anxious, and Curious Followers — The Man Who Came to 
See the Chairs — "I Thought You Were a Humbug " — A Start- 
ling Question — " Do You Know That Man? " — Reward of Ten 
Thousand Dollars for a Lost Diamond — Crawling Under the 
Chairs — Jumping from the Gallery — " You Are Just the Man " — 
Mr. Moody's Condition When He Arrived in Boston as a Boy — 
Crying Unto God in His Extremity — "Moody, I Don't Like 
Your Style " — Personal Reminiscences of the Burning of 
Chicago — A Night of Horror — An Indignant Woman — " None 
of Your Business, Sir" — "Where is Mary?" — The Man Who 
Ran up Behind Mr. Moody — " Talk to the Other Man; I'm All 
Right" — The Man Who Pretended He Wasn't Listening. . 167 

CHAPTER V. 

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND HIS WORK. 

What Is the Holy Spirit? — " What Made You Tell Mr. Moody All 
About Me?" — An Old Negro Preacher's Observation — The 
Clock Without Hands — " Everything Going to Pieces " — A 
"Long-headed" Man — One "Long" Eye, and One "Short" 
Eye — The Hon. Mr. Lot, of Sodom — Grumblers and Fault- 
finders — Coming " To See How Moody Does It " — People Who 
Write Letters to Mr. Moody — "The Terrible Sin of Robbing 



H 



CONTENTS. 



Hen-Roosts " — A Caution to the Old Grave-digger — "To Rent, 
With or Without Power" — Two Ways of Digging a Well — A 
Well that "Froze up in Winter and Dried Up in Summer" — 
The Old Wooden Pump on the Farm 190 

CHAPTER VI. 

SOWING AND REAPING — WHAT SHALL THE 
HARVEST BE? 

Family Skeletons — Teaching Servants to Lie — " Isn't It Strange? " — 
Teaching Clerks Dishonesty — Mr. Moody's Challenge — A Man 
Who Accepted It, and the Result — Reckoning the Cost — Fore- 
closing the last Mortgage — Sowing Wild Oats — Sentenced to 
Prison for Life — The Man in Tears in the Balcony — The Story 
of a Confidential Clerk — "I Am Beyond Help " — Reaping as He 
had Sown — "Hello, Stranger, What Are You Sowing?" — A 
Story of John B. Gough — Mr. Moody's Reminiscences of Him — 
The Man Who Sowed Oats and Thistles — Deserting Wife and 
Children — The Fugitive Forger — The Last Night at Home — 
A Terrible Dilemma — " No Such Person Lives Here." . 207 



CHAPTER VII. 

TEMPERANCE. — TO DRUNKARDS AND REFORMED MEN. 

Bound Hand and Foot — Carried Over the Rapids — Sowing Wild 
Oats — A Thrilling Incident in Mr. Moody's Experience — Beg- 
ging for Mercy in the Dying Hour — The Drunkard's Home and 
Family — The Ragged and Filthy Tramp — "I Have Got it 
Now " — The Arrow that Reached His Heart — Remarkable 
Story of a Vagrant and Outcast — Keeping Out of Debt — 
Working for Twenty-five Cents a Week — " That's the Man for 
Me " — Praying to God for More — " I Guess I'll Reform Too "— 
Drinking Up a Coat — " Mike, Where are your Shoes? " — Sing- 
ing Hymns in Haunts of Vice — Taking Sixteen Men Out of a 
Saloon in One Night 226 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE INFINITE LOVE OF GOD. 

A Business Man's Novel Suggestion — A Touching Incident — The 
Motto in Gas-jets — The Most Beautiful Thing in the World — 



CONTENTS. j r 

An Incident in Mr. Moody's Dublin Experience — What Changed 
Mr. Moody's Ideas about Preaching — Sentenced to Death — A 
Mother's Anguish — A Son's Untimely End — Asking to be Laid 
Beside her Dead Boy — Seeking the California Gold Fields — 
No Room in the Lifeboats — Remarkable Instance of a Mother's 
Love — "Tell Your Father I Died to Save You" — A Father's 
Search for His Missing Son — How He was Found in San Fran- 
cisco — Story of the Boys Who were forbidden to Climb Trees — • 
The Little Dirty Chimney-sweep — Clasped to His Mother's 
Bosom — Mr. Spurgeon and the Weather-vane 249 



CHAPTER IX. 



NOT ASHAMED OF CHRIST. STANDING UP FOR JESUS. 

Mr. Moody's Ride with a Mormon Engineer — A Man Who was Proud 
of His Religion — An Amusing Story of Two Cowards — A 
Policeman Who was Ashamed of His Uniform — The Motto on 
the Building — A Confession of Cowardice — Story of the Two 
Young Men Who Sneaked Out to Hear Mr. Moody — Far-reach- 
ing Results of a Sporting Man's Conversion — Students Plan to 
Rotten Egg Mr. Moody — Carrying a Sermon in His Pocket- 
book — Three Fast Young Men Who Went to Ridicule Mr. 
Moody — A Noisy Meeting — A Chinese Test of a Christian — 
Speaking On a Dry-goods Box — Story of the Young Lawyer 
Who Came Out for Christ — How Judge McLean took His Stand 
— Praying in the Barracks 260 



CHAPTER X. 



THE SOUL'S GREATEST NEED — WHAT CHRIST IS TO US. 

The Text on the Window Pane — " I've Got Him, Thank God! " — An 
Incident in the Life of Napoleon — A Legacy of Five Million 
Dollars — Sitting Quietly at the Feet of Jesus — A Touching 
Incident — "I Want to be With You " — An Incident of the Civil 
War — The Call for Six Hundred Thousand Men — "We Are 
Coming, Father Abraham " — A Man of One Idea — " Oh, Moody 
is a Fanatic " — An Old Scotchman's Remark — " That Man Saved 
Me" — Selling a Woman's Soul at Auction — An Incident of Mr. 
Moody's Boyhood — Early Experiences in the West — Looked 
Upon with Suspicion — Holding meetings in Schoolhouses. 271 



j6 contents. 

CHAPTER XL 

THE UNBOUNDED GRACE OF GOD. 

Telling Mr. Moody How to Preach — The Old Lady Who Locked 
the Door — Mr. Moody's first Arrival in Boston as a Boy — 
Haunting the Post-office — The Man Who Built a Ladder to 
Heaven — The Captured Spy — Mr. Moody's Vanished Audi- 
ence — The Man Behind the Furnace — Sunday-school Teacher 
and the Silver Watch — " More to Follow " — Living on " Old 
Joy " — The Man Who Never Forgot the " Meetings of '57 " — 
One of Mr. Moody's Experiences in London — " High Level " or 
" Low Level " — A Disgusted Listener — "A Tick at a Time " — 
" Peculiar " People — " Weak " and " Lazy " People. . . . 283 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE COMPASSION OF CHRIST. 

An Incident of the Civil War — Sentenced to Death for Sleeping at 
His Post — A Little Girl's Faith in Abraham Lincoln — The 
President's Compassion — " Mother Will Come " — How Mr. 
Moody's Heart was Softened — Experiences Among the Poor — 
" Little Adelaide " — Sad Scene in a Drunkard's Home — " Can't 
You Help Me Find a Place to Bury Her? " — No Money to Buy 
a Shroud — " Papa, Suppose I Were Drowned " — Praying for a 
Tender Heart — An Unmarked Grave in the Potter's Field — 
At the Grave of " Emma " — The Touch of a Mother's Hand — 
"Oh Mother! Have You Come?" 305 

CHAPTER XIII. 

FAITH. 

Starving with Ten Thousand Dollars in the Bank — A Man Who 
Cannot be Pleased — Living on Creeds — " The Building is on 
Fire ! " — Going Out of the Window Head First — "I Never 
Thought of That" — How Mr. Moody Prayed for Faith — The 
Two Men who Planted Trees — "I Don't Believe In Roots " — 
The Beggar By the Wayside — " I've Got the Money, That's 
Enough " — The Little Invalid — Spelling with Crackers — A 
Message for Grandpa — The Box of Paints — "I Don't See It, 
But You've Got It" — Jumping Into His Father's Arms — " I'se 
Afraid, Papa " — Weeping by His Mother's Grave. . . . 317 



CONTENTS. iy 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE ELEMENTS OF PRAYER. 

An Incident in Mr. Moody's London Experience — Four Hundred 
Conversions — Prayers of a Bedridden Saint — An Invitation 
from a London Physician — Praying for Fifty Years — Confess- 
ing to His Family — The Specter of the Five Bottles of Wine — 
"Oh, I Can't pray" — A Remarkable Story — A Family 
Quarrel — Wonderful Reconciliation of a Mother and Daughter — 
Meeting Half Way — An Impressive Incident — An Audience in 
Tears — " There is One Woman I Will Never Forgive " — An Un- 
converted Woman — Living on Grumble Alley — The Smiling 
Christian — The Carpenter who Cut His Thumb — "Bless The 
Lord ! I Didn't Cut it Off " — " I Wonder What's the 
Matter?" 325 

CHAPTER XV. 

THE ELEMENTS OF PRAYER — Continued. 

The Boy Who Wanted a Razor — Thrilling Incident in Mr. Moody's 
Life — The Imperiled Steamer — A Tiny Light over the Waves — 
Rescuing a Ship's Passengers from a Watery Grave — A Re- 
markable Answer to Prayer — The Boy Who Wanted a 
Bicycle — Pleading for a Father's Life — Wonderful Work of a 
Bedridden Boy — Mr. Moody Prays for His Brother Twenty 
Years — Praying for Ridiculous Things — Praying on the Way 
Home — Knocking at the Door — "My Heart is Breaking" — 
A Mother's Earnest Appeal — The Prayer in the Woods — The 
Soldier's Letter — Reminiscences of the Civil War — Mr. Moody's 
Experience with an Audience of Cambridge Students. . . 338 

CHAPTER XVI. 

CHRIST THE GOOD SHEPHERD — CHRIST THE 
COMFORTER. 

Binding Up Broken Hearts — The Deacon's Version of the Twenty- 
first Chapter of John — A Startled Preacher — Trying to Deceive 
the Flock — Mr. Moody's Misquotation Detected by an Old 
Scotch Lady — "Carl, Come Here" — Mr. Moody and His 
Brother Searching for a Flock of Sheep — The Better Land — No 
One Exempt from Trouble — Mr. Moody's Visits to the Sorrow- 
ing — The Deserted Wife — A Broken Heart in Every House — 
A Tragedy of the Sea — Mr. Moody at the Grave of a Dear 
2 



IS CONTENTS. 

Friend — "I Can't Find the Brake " — Tolling the Death- Knell — 
Mr. Moody's Childish Fear of Death — How it was Overcome — 
" Dust to Dust." 354 

CHAPTER XVII. 

TRUST IN GOD GIVES PERFECT PEACE. 

False Friends — The Old Woman Who " Trusted the Lord Till the 
Harness Broke" — A Brave Missionary — "Now I Lay Me 
Down to Sleep " — Seizing the Last Rope — A Dangerous Feat — 
An Interesting Story of the Civil War — The Prayer of a Little 
Fatherless Girl — Asking God to Lend a Little House to Live 
In — The Story of Two Bibles Bought With Children's Money — 
Among Sick and Wounded Soldiers — A Soldier's Dying Message 
to His Mother — A Glorious Death — Mr. Moody's Experience 
in the Panic of 1857 — Starting Out as a Commercial Drummer — 
Expecting Something Dreadful 366 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

EXCUSES. 

The Three Men Who Were Invited to a Feast — The Five Yoke of 
Oxen — The Sunday Newspaper — Sunday and the Bicycle — 
Death-bed Repentance — The Bridge of Sighs — A Hard Master — 
Mr. Moody's Efforts to Release a Man from Prison — Putting 
On the Uniform of Heaven — Hiring a Model — The Beggar and 
His New Suit of Clothes — Too Well Dressed — The Barefooted 
Beggar Boy — How Pie Obtained Five Pairs of Boots a Day — 
The Reckless Sailor Who Longed for a Better Life — Some of 
His Experiences — Drinking "On the Sly " — One Way of De- 
clining an Invitation to Dinner 384 

CHAPTER XIX. 

GOOD NEWS — GLAD TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY. 

Reading a Death Warrant — People Who are Glum and Melancholy — 
Entering Richmond with Gen. Grant — A Thrilling Incident of 
the Civil War — Two Men to be Selected for Immediate Exe- 
cution — Drawing the Names — A Startling Message that came 
to Richmond — Liberating Forty Million Serfs — A Disappointed 
Preacher — An Empty Theater — "Herrings for Nothing!" — 
Incredulous People — Paying People's Debts — The Men Who 
Arrived Too Late — Anecdote of Mr. Spurgeon — The Postman's 
Knock — Farewell to the Little Emigrants — Anecdote of Chaplain 
Trumbull — The Name that Thrilled His Soul — " Fire on those 
Flags If You Dare ! " ' 399 



CONTENTS. jg 

CHAPTER XX. 



THE STANDARD OF MT. SINAI. 

A Woman Who Worshiped Herself — The Man Who Never Sinned — 
Swearing " From the Mouth Out " — A Negro Preacher Who 
Declined to Preach a Sermon on Stealing — People Who 
" Squirm " — • " My Boy Richard Thinks It's Wrong " — Sunday 
Newspapers — How Mr. Moody Kept Sunday When a Boy — ■ 
Working Seven Days a Week — The Drunken Sailor Converted — 
" I am So Tired ! " — " That is My Washerwoman " — The Vale- 
dictorian's Mother — "Get Away, Old Man; I Don't Know You " — 
Story of the Opium Smuggler — The Cashier's Mistake — "How 
Far Is It To Heaven? " 412 

CHAPTER XXI. 

LOVE AND SYMPATHY. 

Won to Jesus by a Smile — "That Man Must be a Minister" — The 
Best for the Money — Light from the Celestial Hills — No Heart 
so Hard but Love will Soften It — A Theory Upset — "I Ain't 
Never Comin' to This Sunday-school no More " — Bearing on the 
"Curiosity" Chord — Making up a Bundle for Johnny — Don't 
Want to go to Heaven if Grandfather is There " — Going West 
to Get Rid of the Neighbors — "I Suppose It's my Duty to Say 
Something " — " Now, Moody, You Are All Wrong " — The 
Power of a Loving Word — " This Is Papa's Friend " — Melted 
to Tears at the Name of " Brother." 430 

CHAPTER XXII. 

THE FUTURE STATE — HEAVEN AND WHERE IT IS — 
ITS INHABITANTS AND RICHES —SHALL WE KNOW 
EACH OTHER* THERE? 

The Future State — What the Bible Says About Heaven — "Every- 
where" Meant "Nowhere" — How Far Away is Heaven? — 
Heaven a Locality— -A Glimpse of the Heavenly World — The 
Dying Soldier — An Incident in Mr. Moody's Life — The Vacant 
Chair — After the Funeral — "Where is My Mamma?" — Read- 
ing His Own Record — An Incident of the Civil War — Calling 
the Roll of Heaven — The Dying Soldier Who Answered, 
"Here ! Here !" — The Man Who Could Talk of Nothing but 
Corner Lots — A Question Often Asked of Mr. Moody — Shall 
We Know Each Other in Heaven? 440 



20 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE OVERCOMING LIFE. 

An Incident in London — Mr. Moody's Experiences when He was 
Converted — " Trouble with D. L. Moody " — At the Outbreak of 
the Civil War — Going to War with a Whoop — Self Control — 
"Mother, Where's My Collar?" — Taking a Dose of Unpleasant 
Medicine — Offering His Wife a Bouquet Instead of an Apology — 
A Story of Anger and Contrition — A Manly Apology — Story 
of Three Millionaires — Waking Up and Finding Himself a Rich 
Man — Mean and Contemptible People — The Jealous Eagle and 
Its Fate — The Boy and the Echo — A Wise Mother— Mr. 
Moody's Experience at a Dinner Party — Washing out religion 
with a Bucket of Cold Water. 458 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

PERSONAL WORK IN THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

Enthusiasm Essential to Success — Teachers Pulling One Way and 
Parents Another — The . iscouraged Superintendent — People 
Who are Like a Bundle of Shavings — Taking Flold and " Holding 
On" — A Touching Incident — The Little Girl Mr. Moody was 
Proud Of — A Rich Young Woman's Choice — An Amazed 
Father and Mother — " Can You Give Me a Class? " — The Shoe- 
maker's Boy — "None of Your Business" — Gaining a Raga- 
muffin's Confidence — " If you Go There again I'll Flog You " — 
Taking His Floggings in Advance — President Lincoln's Visit 
to Mr. Moody's Sunday-school — Feeling Two Inches Taller — 
A Class of Frivolous Girls — A Night Mr. Moody Never Forgot — 
How He Lost His Ambition for Business 471 

CHAPTER XXV. 

THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 

The Man Who Fell Among Thieves — The Priest Who Passed Him 
By — John Wesley's Motto — A Cry for Help — Criminal Selfish- 
ness — Driven Out of Town — Too Many Committees — The 
Levite — The Good Intention — " Drawing " Church Members — 
Blaming the Usher — The Chinaman and the Hoodlums — Race 
Prejudice — The Kind-hearted Samaritan — A " Blowing Up " — 
A Year Wasted — Binding Up His Wounds — A Worker in the 
Seven Dials — Gathering in the Outcasts — Giving Time, Money, 
and Personal Effort — The Fiddling Infidel — Paying the Inn- 
Keeper — A Pung Full of Boys — "Hitch On" — "Get Away! 
Get Away ! " — A Serious Case of Homesickness 483 



CONTENTS. 21 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 

People Who Pick at the Bible — Critics and Cavillers — Jonah and 
the Whale and Some Other Doubted Stories — The Scotchman's 
Answer to a Modern Philosopher — The Boy Skeptic Who Wanted 
to Argue with Mr. Moody — Ministers who Delight in Picking the 
Bible to Pieces — The Only Verse He Could Quote — The Bible 
Judged without Examination — The Minister's Cut Bible — " I'm 
Going to Hold On to the Covers " — Cutting Out what You do 
not Agree With — The Supernatural Things of the Bible — The 
Bible in Three Hundred and Fifty Different Languages — Issuing 
Fifteen Hundred Bibles an Hour 496 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE BIBLE AND HOW TO STUDY IT 

Different Ways of Studying the Bible — Digging Deep for Heavenly 
Truths — An Infidel's Challenge to Mr. Moody — Using a Con- 
cordance — The Man Who Wanted a Book on Assurance — Study- 
ing the Bible with a Telescope — Characteristics of the Gospels — 
How Mr. Moody Held the Attention of the Northfield Students — 
Studying the Bible with a Microscope — A Real and an Artificial 
Bee — Preachers with Flippant Tongues — Mr. Moody's Inter- 
leaved Bible — Marking the Bible — Mr. Moody's Recollections 
of the Family Bible — " Greeney From the Country" — The Im- 
portance of Knowing 509 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE STORY OF THE DELUGE — TO FATHERS AND 
MOTHERS. 

An Awful Communication — Noah Considered a Lunatic — Jeered 
at by His Neighbors — The Man Who Claimed that Force and 
Matter Work Together — Rocks Made of Sand, and Sand Made 
of Rocks — " Noah and His Folly " — Sending Reporters to 
" Write Up " Noah and His Ark — " No Signs of a Storm " — 
Confidence in a Father's Piety — The Beasts and Fowls Flock 
to the Ark — A Warning Always comes Before the Blow — " You 
Can't Get In " — The Last Day and the Last Hour — " Are All the 
Children In?" — A Wealthy Land-owner and His Dying Son — 
"Father, Have I Got to Die?" — "I Shall be With Jesus To- 
night" — The Hymn Book Stained with Blood 522 



22 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE RICH FOOL. 

The Biblical Meaning of " Fool " — Working and Planning from the 
Cradle to the Grave — Living for this World Only — Pulling 
Down the Old Barns — Making Plans for the Future — A Visit 
at the Silent Midnight Hour — Pleading With Death — Stricken 
with Grief — The Epitaph on the Monument — A Terrible Mis- 
take — The Mother and the Little Blind Child — One of Mr. 
Moody's Reminiscences — The Sailor's Pertinent Question — A 
Mother's Ambition for Her Only Son — The Prickings of Con- 
science — A Promise to a Dying Mother — The Graves of the 
Household — " Father, Come this Way " — The Little Beckon- 
ing Hand — Where will You be Next Year? 535 

CHAPTER XXX. 

INFIDELS AND INFIDELITY. 

Sending His Daughter From the Room — "I Did not Think it Would 
do Her any Good to Hear What I Said" — A Crooked Path — 
A Son Gone Astray — " Father, I Am Dying " — " What is to 
Become of Me?" — Farewell Forever — Full Inspiration of the 
Bible — Crying for Mercy — A Broken-hearted Wife — The Dying 
Infidel — "What Have I Got to Hold On To?" — Last Words 
of Lord Byron and St. Paul — A Wife's Request — Mr. Moody's 
Visit to an Infidel — Laughed at for His Pains — Asking for Just 
One Favor — "When I Am Converted I Will Let You Know " — 
A Night of Agony — "Try Your Hand On Me." . . .545 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

BACKSLIDERS AND BACKSLIDING. 

People Who Have " Never Slid Forward " — Mr. Moody's Theology — 
The Cause of Hard Times — The Curse of Tobacco and Whis- 
key — " I Have Had a Bitter Time " — Mr. Moody and the Old 
Backslider — An Incident of the Civil War — A Father Searching 
the Hospitals for His Son — " John Thompson, Your Father Wants 
You " — Peculiarities of Backsliders — Pretexts and Excuses — 
Bad Husbands and Wretched Wives — Story of the Boy in " the 
Bush" — An Incident in Mr. Moody's London Experience — A 
Man and His Four Photographs — Advertising Himself as a 
" Prominent Worker " — An Incident on the Plains. . . . 554 



CONTENTS. 23 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

One Thing God Cannot Do — What Became of the Missing Five 
Dollars? — Three Stumbling Blocks — A Humorous Incident — 
The Man Who was Looking for " Cold Chills " — A Re- 
markable Incident in Mr. Moody's Career — Mr. Moody Loses 
His Way — " Would You Tell Me Who You Are? " — An Aston- 
ished Scotchman — The Colorado Convict and His Flowers — 
"They Remind Me of My Mother" — Obstinate Sammy — An 
Incident in Glasgow — A Memorable Night — How Did John 
Draw the Crowd? — A "Sensational" Preacher — "Did You 
Notice His Coat?" — Remarkable Story of Mr. Moody's Neigh- 
bor, Long — The Pointing Finger of a Madman 564 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

SOCIAL AND WORLDLY AMUSEMENTS. 

The Boy Who Shunned His Father — " Oh, He Is An Old Fogy " — 
Marrying a Man to Convert Him — Tottering Homes and Blasted 
Lives — Where Sorrow and Disaster Thrive — The Banker and 
His Dishonest Partners — Dying of a Broken Heart — Northfield 
Boys and Early Apples — Straddling the Fence — An Incident of 
the Civil War — Putting Up the Wrong Flag — The Converted 
Man Who Wouldn't Give Up Anything — Is it Right to Dance? — 
Shall I Go To The Theater? — " This Is No Place for Me " — 
" Don't Make a Fool of Yourself " — " Come, Moody, Let's Have 
a Game " — Card Parties — " Chutter, Chutter, Chutter " — " The 
Man that Comes here Sundays " — Footprints in the Snow. 581 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

AN APPEAL TO PARENTS. 

A Theory that Proved to be All Wrong — "Mother Is Not In" — 
Social Lies — Formation of Character — From the Sunday-school 
to Beer Gardens — Reaping the Consequences — "How Did You 
Come Here?" — Mr Moody's Secret — In Prison Under an 
Assumed Name — Moving in the " Highest Circles " — A Broken- 
hearted Mother — " Cut It Finer" — Looking Upon Sunday with 
Dread — " Natural Goodness " — The Lighthouse Keeper Watch- 
ing for the Return of His Sailor Son — A Grief-stricken Father — 
Removing His Mother's Body — A Remarkable Story — "Have 



2 4 



CONTENTS. 

You Seen My Boy?" — Story of the Little Wooden Cross — A 
Mother's Letter to Mr. Moody 596 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

HOW TO CONDUCT MEETINGS — TO YOUNG CONVERTS. 

Preaching Everybody Out of Doors — Killing a Meeting — "A Pity 
to Stop While There's Anybody Listening " — Some Astonished 
Elders — Asking for an Explanation — Curiosity Aroused — Long- 
winded Ministers — Deacons Who Talk Too Long — What an 
Old Deacon Said — Six Years Without a Welcome — " Disturbing 
the Impression" — Mr. Moody's Rejoinder — Harrowing it In — 
What to do With People Who Sleep in Church — How Mr. 
Moody Slept in Dr. Kirk's Church — The Result — A Hot-Water 
Advocate — A Convert's Experience Under a Railroad Bridge — 
"Wait Till I Get My Big Brother " — Story of An Old Colored 
Woman — Jumping Through a Stone Wall — " Before and After " 
— The Uplifted Knife — Reminiscences of Mr. Moody's Early 
Career ....... 610 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

QUALIFICATIONS FOR CHRISTIAN WORK — FAITH, 
COURAGE, ENTHUSIASM, AND PERSEVERANCE — 
NINE NEW THINGS FOR THE CHRISTIAN. 

A Scotchman's Observation — " We Die, but Never Surrender " — 
Weighing Men — " Man Overboard ! " — The Light at the Port 
Hole — Saved by a Seasick Man — The Woman Who Went to 
War with a Poker — Wandering in the Blizzard — The Tiny Light 
in the Window — The Man by the Lamp-post — An Impudent 
Fellow — " Moody, You Are Too Zealous " — An Unexpected 
Call at Daybreak — An Incident in Mr. Moody's Early Life — 
"Go Pick Cotton" — Why One Stone was Missing — Stephen 
Girard and the Irishman — "I was There ! " — A Fatal Mis- 
take — Hanging On to the "Old Man" — Dressing Up "Out- 
side " and " Inside " — Story of the Farmer and His Pump — 
" I'll Soon Make that Right " — Patching Up " Old Adam " — 
The Old Judge and His Negro, Sambo— " Good Night." , 621 




r^\. 



By Rev. LYMAN ABBOTT, D. D. 



D WIGHT L. MOODY needs no introduction to any 
English reading circle, but I am so glad to be in even 
the slightest measure identified with him and his work, 
that I cannot deny myself the pleasure of acceding to the 
request of the publishers to write an introduction to this 
volume. 

For no man on either side of the ocean has done so much 
as Mr. Moody to solve practically the problem often and 
laboriously discussed : How to carry the Gospel to non-church 
goers. No ordained preacher of any denomination has 
reached with his voice so many thousands as has this lay- 
preacher. Most clergymen speak to hundreds, Mr. Moody 
has spoken to thousands ; most clergymen speak to the same 
auditors week after week, Mr. Moody has gathered congrega- 
tions in almost every great city in both the United States and 
Great Britain ; most clergymen speak to men and women 
brought up in a religious atmosphere, and measurably familiar 
from the cradle with religious truth ; Mr. Moody has spoken to 

(25) 



2 6 INTRODUCTION BY REV. LYMAN ABBOTT. 

many men and women who but for him would never have 
heard the name of Christ except in profanity. The music 
contributed by his former companion in work, Mr. Sankey, 
undoubtedly did much to attract these congregations at first; 
but the attraction furnished by the music was no more esthetic 
than the attraction furnished by the speaking was oratorical. 
In both cases it was the life expressed, not the form of the ex- 
pression, which drew together the multitudes, and the music 
and the speech have both illustrated the meaning and the truth 
of Christ's saying, " And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will 
draw all men unto Me." 

For this is what pre-eminently Mr. Moody has done by his 
speech and Mr. Sankey by his music — they have lifted up 
Christ ; and in the presence of this fact all criticisms on the 
taste, the culture, the theology, are unimportant. In this 
respect, Mr. Moody's preaching and its effects have repeated 
the phenomena of the Methodist movement in the eighteenth 
century. When Mr. Moody began his Evangelical ministry, 
as when John Wesley began his over a century earlier, the 
preaching in the regular pulpits and by the duly appointed 
ecclesiastical teachers too often lacked the simplicity of Christ's 
spirit. Sometimes it had become the repetition of a theologi- 
cal system ; sometimes a course of instruction in ethical cul- 
ture ; sometimes a proclamation of law, a Thou shalt and Thou 
shalt not ; sometimes a species of emotionalism more or less 
successfully attempting to be dramatic ; sometimes it could 
hardly be distinguished from literary essays or political stump 
speeches. Doubtless, in spite of such defections, there was in 
the Christian Church a great deal of genuine Gospel preach- 
ing — more than there was in the organized churches 
either in Old England or New England in the previous cen- 
tury. But the one age, as the other, called for an itinerant 
prophet who should not be educated in scholastic theology, 
who should go outside the churches to the " plain people," 
who should speak the language of common life, not that of the 
schools, and whose message should be neither law, ethics, nor 



INTRODUCTION BY REV. LYMAN ABBOTT. 



27 



theology, but the Glad Tidings of a crucified and a risen 
Christ. 

This has been pre-eminently Mr. Moody's message. His 
whole teaching might be summed up in the one sentence which 
constituted Luther's " little Gospel " : " God so loved the 
world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." 
In his philosophical interpretation of the facts of religion, Mr. 
Moody has in important respects disagreed with men who 
have gladly co-operated with him and with whom he has 
gladly co-operated. Not the least of the many services which 
Mr. Moody rendered to the age has been this practical 
demonstration that religion is more than theology, and that, 
based upon this principle, a true Christian catholicity is always 
possible. Mr. Moody's psychological conception of inspira- 
tion undoubtedly differed from that of George Adam Smith, 
and his philosophy of redemption differed from that of 
Henry Drummond. But he worked in hearty fellowship 
with both, much to the surprise and in spite of the opposition 
of some men of narrower mold, who could not under- 
stand Christ's declaration, " He that is not against us is for us." 
The same spirit enabled him, though a radical Protestant, 
to maintain friendly relations with Roman Catholic ecclesias- 
tics, and, though a Second Adventist — in the non-partisan 
sense of that term — to work in cordial relations with men 
who believed that the prophecies of Christ's second coming 
were fulfilled by the destruction of Jerusalem. This same spirit 
has absolutely prevented any formation of a new school about 
him as a leader. There is a Northfield in the United States, as 
there is a Keswick in England ; but there is no Northfield 
school in the United States as there is a Keswick school in 
England. Mr. Moody's theology is simply this : Christ's 
Gospel is the cure for the world's sin and sorrow. That God 
loves the world of men, that He has given His only Son to die 
for the world, that in the death and resurrection of His Son is 
the secret of the world's redemption, that by reason of it the 



2 g INTRODUCTION BY REV. LYMAN ABBOTT. 

world eventually will be delivered from sin and sorrow, and 
that any individual may be delivered from sin and sorrow now 
by simply accepting the gift of life from God through Jesus 
Christ His Son, — this is an epitome of Dwight L. Moody's 
preaching. Nothing more than this is essential to the Gospel ; 
nothing less than this suffices for the Gospel. 

Some of the criticisms to which Mr. Moody has been sub- 
jected would be amazing were it not a common experience 
that he who is ambitious to be a critic rarely takes the trouble 
to ascertain whether his criticism is founded on fact. Such 
critics have imagined that Mr. Moody was accustomed to 
attract men by terrifying them, and, by appealing to im- 
aginary fears, sought to produce a feverish excitement 
which passed for religion. That there has been such 
preaching in Evangelical circles is very true, though much 
less of it than assailants of the church would have us believe ; 
but such is not Mr. Moody's message nor Mr. Moody's 
spirit. " I used to think," he says in one of his sermons, " of 
God as a stern judge on the throne, from whose wrath Jesus 
Christ had saved me. It seems to me now, I could not have 
a falser idea of God than that. Since I have become a father, 
I have made this discovery : That it takes more love and 
sacrifice for the father to give up the son than it does for the 
son to die." * 

Mr. Moody's preaching was founded not on the wrath of 
God, but on God's love. That Mr. Moody sometimes appealed 
to fear is true, though, so far as I recall his ministry, never 
to mere physical fear ; he often appealed to conscience, and 
always with forcefulness ; but he generally appealed to love and 
hope. And this was the real secret of his power. It was 
the secret of the power of the Methodist preachers in the last 
century, of the Lutheran preachers in the Reformation, and 
of the apostolic preachers in the primitive Church. To men 
who had lapsed into a dull despair or a dull self-content more 



Men of the Bible, p. 22. 



INTRODUCTION BY REV. LYMAN ABBOTT. 



2 9 



dangerous than despair, this Gospel message of God's love, 
when interpreted by a divinely inspired love for men in the 
preacher, has always brought with it the inspiration 
of love and the impulse of hope. The translation of the 
love of God into the love of a human soul for a hu- 
man soul, not because it is worthy of love, but because 
it is in need of love, is the Gospel, and when it comes 
to men who are hopeless of ever becoming worthy of doing 
anything worthy it rarely fails to meet a response. And this 
was the first element in Mr. Moody's power. 

The second element was like it : His conviction that 
when this life of love and hope is born in a man's heart and 
he begins to live or to try to live as Christ would have him 
live, because Christ loves him, he is saved. Lost and saved in 
Mr. Moody's preaching are both present facts. The man who 
is without God and without that life of hope and love which 
faith in God imparts is lost ; the man who lives with God and 
possesses that life of hope and love which faith in God imparts 
is saved. That there is an eternal lost which lies in the future 
of the one condition and an eternal saved which lies in the 
future of the other is true ; but this is not the truth which Mr. 
Moody emphasized. He emphasized the facts of a present 
loss and a present salvation. It was his thought, not that the 
world will be lost, but that it is lost ; not that the Christian will 
be saved, but that he is saved. And he made this message of a 
present salvation effective because the message grew out of his 
own personal experience. He did not promise a future hope, 
which may be realized and may not ; he promised a present ex- 
perience which he was sure can be realized because he had 
realized it himself. No priest or bishop, no, not the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, nor the Pope of Rome, can pronounce 
with more authority the absolution and remission of their sins 
to all those who truly repent and unfeignedly believe His holy 
Gospel than did this layman who disavowed all semblance of 
ecclesiastical authority. But in this absolution there was no 
assumption ; his authority was spiritual, not ecclesiastical. With 



30 



INTRODUCTION BY REV. LYMAN ABBOTT. 



Paul he might truly say, " I received it not of man, but by 
revelation of Jesus Christ." It belonged to him as it belongs 
to every disciple who has a like experience. 

And this Gospel which Mr. Moody derived from ex- 
perience he interpreted in the terms of experience. He had 
little imagination and no fancy. He rarely drew illustrations 
from nature, and even more rarely from books. The reader of 
this volume can hardly fail to be impressed by the fact that, 
with rare exceptions, his illustrations are concrete biographical 
accounts of the experience which he is expounding. Nor are 
these experiences used to elucidate a theory ; they are used to 
assure his hearers of a fact. Though Mr. Moody was never 
a pastor, probably no settled clergyman ever had so wide 
and varied a pastoral experience. Few priests have received 
so many and so absolutely genuine confessions. His personal 
work was quite as extraordinary as his platform and public 
work. And this personal work gave him an insight into 
human experiences which he used freely in interpreting both 
the needs of humanity and the gifts of God. He spoke like 
a lawyer presenting a case, and told with a simplicity which is 
better than rhetorical skill the story of the witnesses who 
attested his cause. 

He was thus singularly free from that professionalism which 
is the bane of the pulpit. The ease with which the preacher 
falls into it and the difficulty with which he avoids it are not 
ordinarily apprehended by the layman. The minister is ex- 
pected to be ready at the appointed time to speak to a relatively 
indifferent audience on the highest spiritual themes. He is 
expected not only to charm them by his literary skill, but also to 
stir them by his divine passion. He might by careful prepara- 
tion secure the literary charm, but the divine passion cannot 
be kept subject to call. It is not strange that the preacher 
oscillates between thinking it his duty, on the one hand, to 
employ all the resources, if not also all the artifices of the 
orator, and trusting, on the other hand, to the emotionalism 
of the moment to give efficiency to extemporaneous exhorta- 



INTRODUCTION BY REV. LYMAN ABBOTT., 3 1 

tions. In either case he becomes the professional orator. 
Mr. Moody was not an orator and did not try to be one. 
As he stood on the platform he looked like a business man ; he 
dressed like a business man ; he took the meeting in hand as 
a business man would ; he spoke in a business man's fashion ; 
he had no holy tone ; he never introduced a jest for a jest's sake, 
but he did not fear to use humor if humor would serve his pur- 
pose ; he never turned a sentence neatly to catch that applause 
of the eye which is substituted in religious assemblies for ap- 
plause of the hands ; and whether they believed with him or 
not, his auditors were always sure that he believed all that he 
said, and indeed, said less than he believed because no language 
could express fully the experience of his own life. 

And this conviction was confirmed by his life. He lived as 
he preached. His faith in the power of faith was exemplified 
by his conduct ; he might well have claimed that it was verified 
by results. Without salary or stated means of support, he not 
only lived apparently a comfortable, though never a luxurious, 
life, maintained a home, and educated his children, but he 
carried on an itinerant ministry, the expense of which in travel 
alone could not have been inconsiderable, built up and sus- 
tained a great Biblical school for the education of lay-workers 
in Chicago, two large and flourishing educational institutions, 
one for girls at Northfield, one for boys across the Connecticut 
River at Mount Hermon, and a summer school in religion at 
the former place, which, without becoming sectarian, parti- 
san, scholastic, or narrowly pietistic, exerted a constantly 
widening influence by transfusing with the spirit of the Glad 
Tidings of a present salvation all parties and all churches of 
the Protestant and Evangelical faith. Such a character and 
career are well worth the careful study of all Christ's followers ; 
such courageous and consecrated faith are well worth their 
emulation. 

This introduction was written and printed before Mr. 
Moody's death ; had it been delayed till after that death I might 
have written it with a freer pen. But perhaps not. At all 



3^ 



NTRODUCTION BY REV. LYMAN ABBOTT. 



events I shall not now acid to it any of those terms of eulogy 
which would have been so distasteful to him, — is it not more 
true to say are so distasteful to him ? We would have his mem- 
ory as he would have his life, simply a tribute to Christ. One 
of the most ancient creeds of the universal Church declares the 
sublimest fact in human history in a very. simple phrase: " I 
believe in one Lord Jesus Christ . . . who for us men and 
our salvation came down from Heaven." Mr. Moody believed 
that as he believed in his own existence. He lived that he 
might bear witness to this truth. He bore that witness alike 
by his words and by his conduct. He was the last of that school 
of evangelists in which his predecessors were Whitefield, Fin- 
ney, Nettleton. His methods cannot in our time be success- 
fully imitated by another. But so long as the Church holds 
to this ancient faith in a divine Helper and Saviour, and to its 
right to pronounce with authority, spiritual not ecclesiastical, 
the absolution and remission of sins, so long, though by new 
voices and in new methods, it will surprise and perplex journal- 
ists, historians, and philosophers by the power of the Glad 
Tidings of Christ, of which Dwight L. Moody was so illustrious 
a herald. 




By REV. CHARLES F. GOSS, D.D., 

Pastor of Mr. Moody's Chicago Church for Five Years. 

CHAPTER I. 

Dwight L. Moody's Birthplace — Death of His Father — The 
Widowed Mother and a Heavily Mortgaged Farm — The Little 
Red Schoolhouse — An Uncontrollable Love of Mischief — In- 
cidents in His School Days — How His Teacher Conquered 
Him — A Wanderer at Seventeen — His Advent into Real Life in 
the City of Boston — How He was Converted — Decides to go to 
Chicago — Finds Work at Last — Running Down Country 
Merchants on the Streets — Becomes Identified With a Church — 
Rebuked for His Rough and Ready Speeches — Starting a Mission 
School on His own Responsibility — An Outfit of Ragamuffins 
and Street Urchins — His Sunday-school Grows to 1,000 Pupils — 
Loses his Interest in Business • — "I am working for Jesus 
Christ " — No Money, but Plenty of Friends. 

DWIGHT LYMAN MOODY was .born in Northfield, 
Mass., on February 7, 1837. He came of Puritan 
stock, and there would be much in the study of his 
ancestry to interest the believer of heredity. But it 
was his mother who alone exerted any demonstrable influence 
upon his character. This stern and resolute woman was left 
a widow with a brood of growing" children by her husband's 
death in 1841. Her neighbors advised her to distribute them 
among her friends ; but she planted herself firmly on the slope 
of a rugged New England hill and resolutely decided to keep 
them together. The farm was heavily mortgaged and she 
was excessively poor, but nothing could shake her purpose and 
3 (33) 



34 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



she triumphed nobly. That the children had to bear their 
share of the burdens goes without saying, and Dwight (little 
fellow that he was) took his turn with the others. The Con- 
necticut Valley, in which Northfield is located, is surpassingly 
beautiful, and, although Mr. Moody seldom indulged in de- 
scriptions of scenery, he was a passionate lover of nature, 
and no doubt formed this taste in that almost paradisaical 
spot. In the small and straggling village opportunities for 
culture were rare. There was a Unitarian church which his 





WHERE D. L. 



MOODY WAS BORN. THE MOODY HOMESTEAD AT 
NORTHFIELD, MASS. 



family attended, and a village school to which he was sent a 
good deal oftener than he went ! Hear him describe it ! " In 
the little red schoolhouse which stood nearly opposite the 
house where I lived there were some bad boys who ran things, 
and I was one of the worst. We had a man teacher, who used 
the rattan on us a good deal, and took us by the ears and spun 
us around when we tried to do as we pleased. There was a 
great deal of excitement in our end of the town over the pun- 
ishment of the boys. One faction said that love would do for 
the boys what the rattan failed to do. The other faction 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 35 

thought that the rattan was the only proper punishment. 
After a while the love faction ruled, and there was a lady 
teacher in the schoolhouse. 

" My, but didn't we think we were going to make things 
hum ! So I said to the other boys, ' Now we will have all the 
fun we want ! ' Well, the first one to be punished was Dwight 
Moody. I was told to stay after school. I told the boys if 
she tried the rattan on me there would be music. What do 
you think that teacher did? She sat down and told me that 
she loved every one of the boys, and that she wasn't going to 
use the rattan on any one of them. If she couldn't teach 
school without whipping the boys she would resign. She 
spoke most lovingly and wept while talking. That broke me 
all up. I would rather have had a rattan used on me than to 
see her cry. I said : ' You will never have any more trouble 
with me, and the first boy that makes trouble, I will settle him.' 
That woman won me by grace. The next day one of the boys 
cut up, and I whacked him. I whacked him so much that the 
teacher told me that was not the way to win the boys. Do 
you know what grace means? It means unmerited mercy, 
undeserved favor." 

Amidst such influences the boy developed into a sturdy, 
restless, eager, impulsive youth. His love of mischief was un- 
controllable, and the sides of old neighbors still shake at the 
memory of his pranks. In her later years when the old mother 
sat in quiet comfort in the home which her son had made 
beautiful, she would tell with that sparkling light in her eye 
which was seen almost habitually in his, how he put squirrels 
into the dinner pails of his companions, or started the horses 
suddenly when some farmhand was helplessly drinking from a 
jug upon the seat of the wagon, and tumbled him over into its 
bed. Humor and pathos, life and death, heaven and hell, sun- 
shine and shadow, blended themselves into a tangled web in his 
young life. Now he is sent away from home to work, and in 
a fit of ungovernable homesickness is given a penny by a good 
old man whom he will remember to his dying day * ; now he 



* Incident related by Mr. Moody on page 1S6. 



36 LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 

meets with an accident in which he escapes death by prayer ; 
now a farmhand tells him a thrilling tale of his early refusal of 
the " call of God " and makes him tremble with the sense of 
sin and personal responsibility; now his brother rims away 
from home, leaving the old mother to weep by the fireside, and 
again comes back a prodigal and seeks her pardon.* 

From his eloquent lips again and again all over the world 
he has told these incidents of a childhood which remained as 
fresh to him as if he were still in it, until the whole picture can 
be reconstructed and he can be seen moving noisily and rest- 
lessly among these simple scenes, drinking in the abundant 
life around him in great full breaths ; healthy, ardent, living 
an out-of-door and out-of-self life, eagerly absorbing but not 
yet digesting the experiences through which he passed. 

Soon after his seventeenth year the " wander-lust " came 
upon him, and out he went into the wide world, ignorant, but 
strong and fearless. He made his first grapple with real life 
in the city of Boston. He had relatives there, but, being high 
strung and independent, refused to seek their aid until driven 
to it by a stern necessity. It did him good to humble that 
proud young heart, and he secured a place in his uncle's store 
upon three conditions : He was to board at a place selected by 
his uncle ; he was not to go out nights ; he was regularly to at- 
tend the Mount Vernon Church and Sunday-school. 

He accepted the inevitable (as he always did) and plunged 
in. The strenuous discipline of regular labor told rapidly. 
The services of the church in which the famous Doctor Kirk 
was pastor did not at first impress him much ; but at length, a 
Sunday-school teacher whose heart was full of genuine love (a 
certain Mr. Kimball) placed his hand upon his shoulder and 
asked him if he would not " give his heart to Christ." This 
act made one of those indelible impressions upon him which 
any appeal to his heart or soul always left. He is perhaps to 
be taken literally when he says " I can feel the touch of that 
hand upon my shoulder yet." The question aroused a dor- 
mant spiritual nature. 

* Incident related by Mr. Moody on page 402. 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



37 



X 



It is doubtful if he in any way comprehended the emotions 
which began to boil up from his deep young heart; but they 
were unmistakably religious, 

and he sought to join the ^m .' %. 

church. He was, however, so /p' I : 

rough, uncouth, and ignorant jBH 
that the old deacons shook am 

their heads and put him on IB Wk 

" probation." Many years jjj| Wk 

afterward, with that eagle eye ||| 'j» 

of his, he spied one of these H| 
very men in one of his great 
meetings in England, called 
him to the platform, and intro- 
duced him as " one of the dea- 
cons who did not think he was 
fit to come into the church ! " 
It was one of the innumera- 
ble dramatic incidents of his 
life, and was paralleled by an- 
other, when, years later, he 
had the privilege of leading the son of his former Sunday- 
school teacher to undertake the Christian life. 

Boston proved but a cage for this young- eagle, and he 
sighed for the boundless opportunities of the " West." When 
he was nineteen he took flight and alighted in Chicago. It was 
the natural habitat for a spirit striving for the fullest possible 
expression of itself. 

He found work at once, and took his place in that proces- 
sion of young men who were not only laying the foundations 
of their own subsequent enormous fortunes, but building a city 
without parallel in the history of the world. He was in his 
element at last. Here was boundless room, and here were un- 
limited opportunities. He settled down to his work, and it 
soon became evident that he had a great future of some kind 
before him. No obstacle appalled him and no work was too 
hard for him. If customers did not come to see him he went 



DWIGHT L. MOODY AS HE AP- 
PEARED WHEN HE REMOVED 
FROM THE FAMILY FARM TO 
BOSTON. 

(From a photograph.) 



38 LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 

out to find them in the highways and byways, until it came to 
be a proverb as he was seen running down some country mer- 
chant in the streets, " the spider is after the flies again." 

The religious emotions kindled in his young soul were still 
burning, and he at once identified himself with one of the Con- 
gregational churches, rented five pews, and undertook to keep 
them filled with young men. 

On his first attempts to take part in the religious services 
in the elegant church with which he had united he had been 
tartly advised that his rough and ready speeches were objec- 
tionable. He abandoned them without resentment ; but there 
was something in him which had to find vent, and so he asked 
for a Sunday-school class in a little mission on North Wells 
Street, and was told that he could have it if he would go out 
and get his own scholars. This was a simple task for a young 
fellow who was used to hunting up country merchants in the 
streets, and he appeared next Sunday with a complete outfit 
of ragamuffins, an embryonic Falstaffian army. 

It would be a matter of the most profound psychological as 
well as spiritual interest to be able to penetrate the motives 
which impelled this young fellow, boiling with animal spirits, 
into this kind of endeavor. It is easy enough to solve the 
problem by saying that it was " love for souls." No doubt it 
was, at the bottom. But at the age of nineteen or twenty a 
man's ideas of life are strangely mixed. He certainly did not 
have any clear system of thought about the great spiritual 
problems of existence, and it is likely that what seemed to him 
and to others an " interest in souls " would resolve itself upon 
analysis into a passionate love of human beings just because 
they were human like himself. His heart had always been 
sensitive and tender. He loved all living things. He also 
had the instinct of helpfulness to a very high degree. It was 
as natural for him to run to the assistance of any one in trouble 
as to escape from personal suffering. That he had acquired 
the power at this age to differentiate soul from body as an ob- 
ject of interest and devotion in any such way as the phrase 
would indicate seems extremely doubtful. Perhaps he did not 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY, 



39 



analyze his feelings at all. In fact, a careful self-analysis was 
unnatural if not impossible throughout his entire life. He 
lived in the objective rather than the subjective world. He 
acted upon impulse rather than reflection, and the conception 
we have formed of those first endeavors is that of a great loving 
Newfoundland dog pulling little children out of the water in 
a blind love and devotion. Besides this, such efforts gratified, 
in the easiest and quickest way, that innate love of activity and 
of organization which amounted in him to a passion. In the 
store in which he was only a subordinate, or in churches al- 
ready equipped with workers, he found no real scope for his 
independent talents. In this little mission he sought an oppor- 
tunity to develop along his own lines. And so, with resistless 
energy and purpose, he threw himself into the activities of the 
place. But it was not long (either because he ran against 
snags or because his talents were still too much confined) be- 
fore he branched out in an independent effort of his own. He 
rented the " North Market Hall " on his own personal respon- 
sibility, and for the first time began to find the raw material of 
human life plastic to his touch. 

There now followed a series of experiments and adventures 
which, if they were written up by some one with the talent for 
the true comprehension of such phenomena, would make read- 
ing as fine as Don Quixote or Rabelais. They are still in- 
crusted with the rind of " evangelicalism " or (shall we say) 
" cant " phraseology. In every form in. which we have seen 
them printed they all have the Sunday-school or tract flavor. 
But the fact of the matter is, that they were simply elemental in 
their perfect naturalness. Possessing as real a genius for un- 
derstanding and controlling human nature as did Alexander 
or Napoleon, his first rude endeavors with that divine material 
were as charming as those of the young Mozart with musical 
notes, or Praxiteles with clay. He brought to bear upon his 
task a wit as keen as Sydney Smith's, a tact as divine as Fene- 
lon's, a devotion as undivided as St. Paul's, a love as true as St. 
John's. The " stuff " was rude and he was rude with it often ; 
but generally wise and always kind. At twenty years of age 



40 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



he struck out in absolutely original lines of dealing with the 
little heathen whom he found in lanes and alleys. It was not 
long before the children were literally swarming at his heels. 
His bare appearance was the signal for a pell mell rush. He 
had no trouble in getting them to come to him, but only to find 
places for them after they came. Into the work which he 
undertook he impressed other people as violently as ever the 
English navy did ! He caught one of the rising men of the city 
(a life-long friend) and elected him superintendent (nolens 
volens) by the wild acclamations of his little howling multitude. 
Everybody that came had to teach or speak. If they refused, 
he pushed them forward where they could not escape. At 
first the crowd was a disorganized mob ; but he soon drilled 
them into veterans. Sometimes he bribed them with maple 
sugar, sometimes by telling them stories, and, when it became 
necessary, he thrashed them ! Always and everywhere, by one 
means or another, order rose out of chaos, until at last, at 
twenty-three years of age, he had built up a Sunday-school of 
more than one thousand pupils, which was the wonder and 
astonishment of multitudes of curious visitors.* 

The soul of anyone who studies this period carefully be- 
comes absolutely thirsty for a fair and full record of these ad- 
ventures. He ran against every phase of human experience ; 
dragged men out of saloons ; captured the children of drunk- 
ards ; saved men from crime ; brought relief to the poor and to 
the sick, and sunk his plummet down into the depth of human 
misery. In those six years of unremittent labor in this North 
Market mission he came to know what human nature was in 
its naked simplicity. It was this swift disclosure of the suffer- 
ing and the sin of human life that developed and ripened his 
intrinsic love for mankind into what can be called by no other 
name than a passion. He came to see with an unclouded 
vision that man was capable of redemption ; that he was the 
victim of circumstance as well as of nature ; that he needed 
human help as well as divine. With a concentration that must 
remain forever a wonder, he fixed his attention upon the higher 



* Referred to by Mr. Moody on page 455. 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. ,j 

elements of manhood and womanhood and childhood. He 
gradually lost his interest in the business of making money and 
became absorbed in that of helping out into a larger and truer 
life these elementary creatures whom he saw imprisoned in 
the shell of their own selfishness and brutality. 

This enthusiasm is the stumbling block of the average 
student of human life. He regards it with suspicion. But 
why should it be any more strange that a man should have a 
passion for the discovery of the angelic elements in human 
nature than that he should have a passion for collecting rare 
china or breeding pouter pigeons ? Whatever has been said or 
shall be said as to the genuineness of such disinterested de- 
votion in the heart of this awkward, uncultivated youth, there 
was kindled a passion for the spiritual natures of men that for 
forty years burned in him like an inextinguishable fire. 

The instrument with which he sought to accomplish their 
redemption was the English Bible, which, it must be confessed, 
he read with the greatest difficulty. There were no " Interna- 
tional Sunday-school Lesson Helps " in those days, and he 
fell into the habit of opening his Bible at random and begin- 
ning a rambling discourse without head or tail upon the sub- 
ject which it suggested to his uneducated mind and active im- 
agination. But there were a few great central ideas which he 
had grasped ; which he held with the tenacity of a bull dog, and 
which he learned to illustrate from human life in a way that 
made them flame and glow to every one who heard them. 
They were such conceptions as " The Love of God for Men ; " 
" God's Love Manifested in the Life of Jesus ; " " The Rewards 
of Good Conduct and the Punishment of Bad ; " and " The Pos- 
sibility of Instant Salvation to any Sinner who should accept 
of the death of Jesus as his Atonement." 

With these great truths well in hand he set to work to save 
men, and he succeeded. That old mission was the scene of 
some of the most remarkable reclamations of the vicious and 
depraved that any place on the globe has ever witnessed. It 
deserves a bronze monument far more than many battlefields. 

It was during this period that his connection with the 



42 LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 

Voting Men's Christian Association began. This institution 
was then new, and at once awakened his interest. Into it he 
plunged with his accustomed headlong and unreasoning en- 
thusiasm. There is no doubt that he often made himself a 
nuisance, and that there were many people who could think of 
nothing but a bull in a china shop when they saw him enter ! 
He upset every plan. He cut through all red tape. There 
never lived a man more thoroughly unconventional. The 
opinions of other people had no weight with him as to the best 
way of doing things. No matter how they had been done he 
would have a try and see if there was not a better way. But 
while he tormented the navigators in easy sailing, as soon as 
the weather became at all rough they were glad to take aboard 
this sturdy pilot. The association went through some dark 
days and he came to its rescue. He took the noon meetings 
in hand, and they began to respond to his charmed touch. 
They filled and then they overflowed, and finally became one 
of the features of Western life. Strangers who came to Chi- 
cago were as sure to go and see the Market Street mission and 
the association as strangers in New York to see the Bowery. 

This work and his growing success in it was slowly crystal- 
izing a resolution that had been long in a state of solution. It 
was to devote his entire time to such enterprises.* Business 
had lost its charm. The fascination of this nobler effort had 
enslaved his mind and heart. He had saved about a thousand 
dollars, and with this as his entire capital renounced secular 
avocations once and for all. This was in i860. Not long 
after this step had been taken, his old employer met him and 
asked : " Moody, what are you doing now? " " I am working 
for Jesus Christ " — and there has not been a day nor an hour 
of his life since when this reply would not have truthfully an- 
swered the same question. His thousand dollars soon slipped 
through his ever open hand. How he lived afterwards was a 
mystery. To those who asked him and who blamed him for 
his lack of worldly wisdom, he always answered, " I am work- 
ing for God and he is rich." 

* Incident related by Mr. Moody on page 456. 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. a* 

This is another fact that excites the incredulity of many 
who hear the story of his life. But there is no ground at all 
for skepticism. P^or more than forty years this was his method 
of subsistence. He never had any business ; he never had any 
salary ; he never had any guaranteed income ; he used all the 
money that came from the royalty on his hymn books for be- 
nevolence, and yet he lived ! He saved no money to speak of, 
and left little if any property aside from his home and a life 
insurance ; but he never wanted, and passed " uncounted thou- 
sands " through his hands to innumerable worthy causes and 
people. This is an exceptional experience. There have been 
other such ; but not many. It could not be made the law of 
life, for someone must produce the wealth which supplies the 
wants of these exceptional people. But it is certainly not im- 
probable that such people should be found in a life so com- 
plicated as ours. Their time and strength are surely needed 
for the higher interests of existence. There is no insoluble 
mystery in such an experience even to the unreligious, for 
those who do not believe that God fed him as He did Elijah, 
ought to know that such men will never be permitted to starve ; 
for people inevitably love them and trust them and give them 
money. They use what little they need and pass the rest 
along. 



CHAPTER II. 

Opening of the Civil War — Mr. Moody Enters into New Experi- 
ences — An Important Epoch of His Life — His Work as Chap- 
lain in the Union Army — Its Effect on His After Life — Organiz- 
ing a Church of His Own — Raising $20,000 to Build His First 
Church — His Helpers and Leaders — Sleeping on Benches or on 
the Floor — His Great Capacity for Work — " Getting the Hang " 
of Meetings — His Inexhaustible Fund of Anecdote and Story — 
Captivating Eastern Audiences — Some of His Amusing Oral 
Blunders — His Marriage and Home Life — Scraping the Flour 
Barrel at the Bottom — Getting Hold of the Bible — Discovers 
the Value of Music — Meeting Mr. Sankey for the First Time — 
The Partnership that Followed — Plans to go to England on an 
Empty Pocketbook — The Shadow of Coming Events. 

WITH the opening of the Civil War, the expanding life 
of the young apostle of helpfulness entered a new 
realm of experience. 
Why so courageous, patriotic, and enthusiastic an 
American did not become a soldier is not easy to guess. Per- 
haps he felt that he could be of more service to his country in 
attending to the wants of those who were in the line of battle. 
So it proved at least. The needs of the soldier boys, temporal 
and spiritual, stirred his compassionate heart to its depths, and 
he was one of the very first to grasp and develop the scheme of 
the Christian Commission. Into it he threw his whole heart 
and soul. In those four bloody years the good he did and the 
benefit he received in this thrilling experience made it one of 
the most important epochs of his life. Young as he was, he 
had already attained an influence which made his judgment 
respected by men his superiors in age and in wisdom, and 
brought him to the front in great emergencies. 

(44) 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



45 



The effect of this terrible experience upon his own mind can 
be traced through all the rest of his life in many of his sermons 
and addresses. The immense activities which he beheld, the 
mighty organization of the army, the heroism of the men in 
battle, their patience in suffering, their gratitude for kindness, 
the revelation of their spiritual natures in sickness and death, 
the blood, the tears, the carnage, the awful pomp and pageantry, 
lend a new color, deep, somber, solemn, to all he did and said. 

But exciting and attractive as this work was, it did not 
wean him from that to which he had given his heart in Chicago. 

In 1863 (when he was twenty-six) he raised, by his own un- 
aided efforts, $2©,ooo and erected on Illinois Street, not far 
from the Market Street mission, a commodious church with 
tower and spire for his 
great and growing Sabbath- 
school. There was a con- 
tinuous stream of converts 
to the life which he held up 
as the divine ideal. What 
to do with them became a 
serious question. Because 
they were poor and ignorant 
they did not fit into the 
membership of neighboring 
churches. He was therefore 
shut up to the necessity of 
organizing a church of his 
own. The problem of its 
ecclesiastical nature and re- 
lationships, of course, arose. 
He called a council of min- 
isters and the subject was debated at length, but the rev- 
erend theologians not being able to arrive at any satisfactory 
conclusion he cut the knot (he has cut more knots than 
any man who ever lived) and organized it upon an absolutely 
independent basis. Into its development as a settled, inde- 
pendent, unordained, free-lance minister (the friend of every 




DWIGHT L. MOODY AT THE AGE 

OF 26. 
{From a Photograph.) 



46 LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 

church and the enemy of none) he now plunged with all his 
heart. Such bushwhacking work was surely never done on 
earth before ! It was as original as if it had been the first ever 
undertaken ! But it went ! Everything he touched did ! He 
worked into it every kind of material upon which he could fay 
his hands, as birds build their nests. All that came to his mill 
was grist, and he gathered around himself a band of helpers 
who for zeal and faithfulness and devotion to their leader might 
be called apostles. The love between them and their leader was 
romantic and worthy of the noblest souls. They did any- 
thing and everything he told them to. If the work called for 
great sacrifices they made them. If it needed time and money 
they gave them. If they had to stay at the meeting-house all 
night, they slept on benches or the floor. The story is a ro- 
mance. Laughter and fun were blended (as always) in this 
strange life, with tears and solemn earnestness. Everything 
was natural, spontaneous, unconventional, heartborn. His 
capacity for work was something incredible, and must be dwelt 
upon at length in a proper place. He never seemed capable 
of exhaustion. His record on one New Year's day was two 
hundred calls, during many of which he dropped upon his 
knees with lightning-like rapidity, fired a prayer to heaven, as 
a hunter would shoot a gun — and was ofT ! 

A fine description of some of those pastoral visits would 
have been as good a subject as Kipling ever found in barrack 
or jungle. One would think that this complicated church 
would have taxed all his energies ; but while all this was going 
on he was elected president of the Young Men's Christian As- 
sociation on the platform " that the only way to get a building 
was to put Moody at the head of the institution ! " This was 
an invariable guarantee of success, and did not fail this time. 
He accepted (as he always did), ran, talked, begged, com- 
manded, until there was no more resisting him than an in- 
coming tide. Everything began to seethe and boil under the 
flames of fire which he kindled, and sure enough, the prophecy 
was fulfilled. The first Farwell Hall was the reward of his 
labor, his faith, and his genius. With this fine plan to work 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 47 

in he began to push the spiritual activities of the place with 
as strong a hand as the material. The noon meeting was 
the special feature and became almost as widely known as 
the Fulton Street prayer-meeting. In interest and surprises 
it probably surpassed anything on earth. To be grabbed on 
the street by a sturdy, hustling young fellow, pulled into the 
hall, asked right in the meeting " whether he was a Christian, 
and if so why he did not testify," became an experience which 
men expected almost as much as to be solicited for alms by 
beggars. Everything was on the high tide and humming with 
life when, in January, 1868, the building (not four months old) 
suddenly disappeared in a holocaust of fire. This was noth- 
ing ! The coals were yet burning when he had his plans laid 
for its successor ! The way the Phoenix rose out of the ashes 
was nothing to the way that new hall sprang out of the smolder- 
ing embers of the old one. It soon became a place of more 
than national influence. It was the center of the great re- 
ligious activities of the city, and it is not too much to say that 
everything that radiated from there was rilled with the spirit, 
if it did not take the direct impress, of the heart life of this im- 
passioned apostle of goodness. And still he was " spoiling " 
for work. A church and a Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion were not enough to consume the boiling energies. Even 
Chicago was not big enough to hold him ! 

Another sphere gradually opened to him, in which he re- 
ceived his most direct training for that work which he was to 
do later on. Early in his career he had occasionally been called 
upon to attend and participate in Sunday-school conventions 
held for the purpose of stimulating teachers to more intelligent 
and earnest efforts. It did not take him long " to get the 
hang " of such meetings, and he soon began to make himself 
felt. His wide experience, his inexhaustible fund of anecdote, 
his imperturbable good nature, and strange, droll humor, but 
above all, the spiritual fervor of every word he uttered, soon 
gave him an extraordinary influence at every such occasion. 
It did not take him long to become well known, and his repu- 
tation gradually became national and even extended into 



48 LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 

Canada. He was sent for even from the conservative East, 
and on more than one occasion astonished and captivated the 
people of Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. 

The charm of the man was undoubtedly in his absolute sim- 
plicity. While he possessed the germs of a consummate art, 
there was not the trace of artificiality. He was an uneducated 
man, and made no attempt to conceal it. In all his life he never 
posed. When he made his blunders — and they were legion — 
he laughed with those who laughed, and went straight forward. 
" We have with us this morning a young man who is studying 
in a theological cemetery ! " " The lady who is going to speak 
to you now will tell you how pickled (speckled) trout are 
raised." " Love John Bull ! (in a Canadian convention) I 
guess we do ! Our hearts just warm to her ! " Such faux pas 
were too frequent occurrences to phase him. A shrewd ob- 
server said of him, " Moody is impetuous and is always making 
blunders ; but he never makes the same mistake twice." 

These varied experiences did for him what his future re- 
quired. They gave him familiarity with all sorts of people in 
all sorts of places and in all sorts of conditions. He often 
found them uninterested and not infrequently hostile. Some 
were ignorant and others too wise. He learned to read an 
audience, as some people learn to read a man. There is a 
physiognomy of a crowd, and he became an expert in decipher- 
ing it. To put himself en rapport with it soon passed from 
study and effort to second nature and instinct. He acquired a 
complete knowledge of all the practical difficulties which peo- 
ple encounter in their individual life and work, through his 
" question drawer " system. There is, of course, a limited 
range of such difficulties and problems, and after a man has 
been in fifty or a hundred meetings and had them fired at him 
as if from Gatling guns he has become familiar with the whole 
gamut and cannot be taken off his guard. Perhaps no man 
who ever lived has more often been confronted with more sud- 
den surprises. What he said and did was continually turning 
out different from what he expected. In every embarrassment 
he doubled and turned like a rabbit in the chase. The com- 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



49 



plete self-confidence — in the best sense of the word, for it will 
be shown that in the worst sense he never had any — thus ac- 
quired became of inestimable value. It seems certain that he 
never really felt that uneasy and fatal consciousness of " in- 
capacity " which destroys for many men the very possibility 
of success. 

Such experiences as these perfected that equipment which 
he needed in the practical management of assemblies of men. 
In the meantime, and by many different ways, he was under- 
going a similar preparation in other departments. There can 
be no doubt that the blind feeling of love and care for all who 
suffered and were in trouble had gradually undergone an enor- 
mous development, and that he had by this time become fully 
conscious of that spiritual nature in man which has excited the 
interest and the devotion of the noblest beings who have ever 
Jived. It had grown into what he described as " a passion for 
souls," and to see anyone anywhere pass through that tremen- 
dous change in which the soul recognizes itself as immortal 
and accepts God and eternity as its real good, was to him an 
experience more full of ecstacy than the discovery of gold in 
the vein of a mountain or love in the heart of a maiden. No 
other view can adequately explain the ardor and passion with 
which he devoted himself to this work through forty years of 
ceaseless labor. 

The peace and rest which such a nature needed, and which 
can only be found in a perfectly happy home, also came to him. 

On the 28th of August, 1862, he was married to Miss 
Emma C. Revell. If ever a love was deeper, if ever a happi- 
ness more complete, than that of these two lifelong lovers, it 
must have been somewhere when the world slipped a cog and 
earth touched heaven! Children came to bless the union, and 
that prodigal love which he had lavished upon the ragged 
gamins of the street was now evoked by little children who 
called him " father." The home which the lovers established 
was one of simplicity and hospitality. The latch-string was 
always out ! The story of that domestic economy is both an 
idyl and a psalm. The friends of the man and his work made 
4 



5o 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



him a present of the house he lived in, and " the ravens fed 
them." It would be easy enough to present a grave religious 
picture of these two parents solemnly and devoutly waiting 
upon God in prayer for their daily bread, and going about their 
labors in a saintlike frame of mind. It would be a true picture, 
but only a partial one, for to those who knew them best that 
air of solemn and august piety was missing. They were more 
like birds who started out in the morning with perfect confi- 
dence in their ability to find their food and a complete abandon 
to the joy of work and song. Their lives were probably as 
full of bounding happiness as those of their children. The 
truth of the matter is that the bread and butter problem never 
puzzled Mr. Moody as it does the rest of us. He took it as a 
matter of course that the Master for whom he labored would 
provide the sustenance of the toiler. Although the flour 
barrel often had to be scraped at the bottom, he never gave 
himself any care. His confidence was never betrayed, and he 
grew so accustomed to opening letters and finding checks in 
them, or having money handed to him on the street, that it was 
as natural as drawing his salary ! 

It was during this same period that the final touch was 
given to the equipment which he needed for the great mission 
of his life. He had been so full of other work that he had never 
had time to give to the preparation of his addresses. Those 
which he did not " shake out of his sleeves " were forged upon 
platforms and in pulpits. His knowledge of the English Bible 
was painfully incomplete, and no man ever had to work with a 
more meager kit of tools. But there came to Chicago one 
fortunate day a young evangelist by the name of Rev. Harry 
Morehouse, who perhaps did more for him than any other per- 
son who ever touched his life.* He delivered seven sermons in 
Mr. Moody's church on " God so loved the world that he gave 
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should 
not perish, but have everlasting life." Mr. Moody was away 
at the time ; but when he returned he learned about these ser- 
mons and came under the spell of that very gentle, beautiful, 

* Incident related by Mr. Moody on page 460. 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



51 



holy, and learned student of the English Bible. Morehouse 
told him frankly that he needed a better knowledge of that 
Bible to enable him to win souls. And, what was more and 
better, he gave him the very method by which alone he could 
have in any way made up for the deficiencies of the past. It 
was the method of the " Bible reading." He taught him how 
to use the Concordance to advantage and how to weave to- 
gether in a single discourse many different texts which bore 
upon the same theme. This was perfectly simple, compre- 
hensible, and possible. With his accustomed insight, Mr. 
Moody saw that here was the very thing he needed, and he 
did not lose a moment in putting it into practice. He never 
wasted three seconds in anything he could not do ; but what 
he could do was worth all the work it cost. The method was 
perhaps an imperfect one for the most perfect comprehension 
of the Scriptures, and as well calculated to lead an abnormal 
mind astray, as to lead a normal mind aright. In fact it has 
been responsible for the collapse of many an eccentric though 
devout soul. But with his strange prescience, or through the 
divine providence (or both), he escaped, as he always did, the 
evils of any course he adopted. 

His mind had never been trained to logical reasoning or 
scholarly methods, and, in fact, was perhaps incapable of pro- 
ceeding in that manner to the discovery of truth. It was so 
constituted that it gathered its conclusions from multiplied 
impressions of many sorts, as a bee gathers the sweets of 
flowers and turns them into honey. And so where other and 
eccentric minds used this method to find quotations which sub- 
stantiated their vagaries, he used it to discover those which 
supported the few great central conceptions which were the 
entire stock with which he did his great business. The result, 
therefore, of his patient, ceaseless, heroic struggles to master 
the sacred Scriptures was that he accumulated a vast fund of 
texts and stories to illustrate the truths which he wished to 
hammer into the minds of men. His Bible got to be at last 
(that portion of it which he needed) at his very finger tips. He 
never fell down on his method. He gave it finally an enor- 



52 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



mous vogue, and while the crowds of his servile imitators 
made themselves and the Book ridiculous, he used it to delight 
and instruct millions. In addition to the newness of the 
method was the marvelous freshness which his own simple 
and childlike apprehension gave it. Owing to the natural con- 
stitution of his mind, the words of the Scriptures took posses- 
sion of his faculties in the same vivid way that they do those 
of a child. No one familiar with his utterances can doubt that 
he had an imagination of a very high order. Had it been 
trained to poetical expression it could have produced forms of 
great literary beauty. Before this powerful faculty the heroes 
of Scripture really lived and its truths absolutely glowed. 
Faith is only a spiritualized imagination, and his imagination 
was spiritualized as truly as that of a great inventor is ma- 
terialized. Most ministers and students of the Bible confess 
that it requires their strongest efforts to give reality and vitality 
to the facts recounted in the sacred oracles. Their minds have 
become suspicious by investigating all the evidences for and 
against the supernatural elements of the Bible. Their hold 
upon them is the result of effort. With Mr. Moody it was 
different. No question of their reality ever for a moment 
troubled him. They were as real as if he had seen them with 
his own eyes. Every one who heard him speak felt this, al- 
though perhaps they were not always conscious of it, and this 
vivid apprehension of the facts of Scripture was the greatest 
source of his pulpit power. 

All his natural gifts had now undergone a high develop- 
ment. The consciousness of them had been pretty clearly 
unfolded to himself. The wings were nearly grown and the 
eagle began to plume them for a wider flight. 

One thing, however, was still lacking. He had discovered 
the value of music in kindling the emotions of men and putting 
them in a receptive state for his influence. The fact that he 
realized the importance of this is another evidence of the range 
of his powers, for he had absolutely no knowledge of music 
and could not even sing a note. Just what pleasure singing 
gave him personally is an unsolved problem, and perhaps in- 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY 



53 



soluble. It has sometimes seemed to those who observed him 
carefully that his pleasure was an indirect one, and came from 
seeing its influence upon others. At any rate he discovered 
what it could do at public gatherings, and he early began to 
grope around for some way in which it could be made to sub- 
serve his own particular needs. It was a remarkable coinci- 
dence (let us rather call it Providence) that just at this time 
there appeared a class of men working along the very lines 
which he was blindly following. The pioneers were Philip 
Phillips and P. P. Bliss, whose aim was not to sing hymns, but 
the " Gospel." At one of his conventions Mr. Moody heard 
one of their youngest disciples. He recognized instantly that 
he had found what he wanted. The story of his discovery and 
capture of his life-long friend and companion, Ira D. Sankey, 
is not only striking in itself, but typical of those innumerable 
experiences in which, without the slightest hesitation, he in- 
stantly summoned men to assume grave responsibilities with 
no other knowledge of their fitness than his own unaided in- 
tuitions, the confidence which he reposed in these intuitions 
being as unquestioning, apparently, as that of an animal in its 
instincts. 

It was at a convention held in Indianapolis in June, 1871, 
that Mr. Moody for the first time heard the voice of the young 
Pennsylvania!!. Mr. Sankey was thirty-one years of age, 
healthy, happy, earnest, and full of music. The singing had 
been dull until he stepped forward to lead it. Something in 
him fitted the need of the moment. The hymns rolled out 
sweet and strong. The whole audience was moved ; but one 
of them was enraptured. 

" Where do you live? " asked Mr. Moody bluntly. 

" In Newcastle, Pennsylvania." 

" Are you married ? " 

"Yes." 

" How many children have you ? " 

' One." 

" I want you." 

"What for?" 



54 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



" To help me in my work at Chicago." 

" I cannot leave my business." 

" You must. I have been looking for you for the last eight 
years. You must give up your business and come with me to 
Chicago." 

" Well, I will think of it. I will pray over it. I will talk 
to my wife." 




IRA D. SANKEY, MR. MOODY'S YOKE-FELLOW, AGE 35. 
{From a Photograph.) 



He did so and accepted his call. This followed almost as a 
matter of course, for, speaking calmly and without exaggera- 
tion, it would be hard to find an instance in which this strange 
being thus laid his hands upon any one who did not instantly 
rise up and follow him in much the same way as did those 
whom Jesus called — his power to command the services of 
men absolutely being something that of itself alone would have 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L MOODY. 



55 



made him a man whose influence bordered upon the mysteri- 
ous and even inscrutable. 

These two companions (true yoke-fellows) worked together 
in Chicago for several months, and when Mr. Moody made his 
first trip to Europe he left Mr. Sankey in charge of his church. 
It was during this period that he began to make a scrapbook of 
hymns suited to their needs, and this little scrapbook was the 
nucleus of the " Gospel Hymns " — one of the most famous 
publications in literature or music. 

This new partnership was only a few months old when an 
event happened which startled the civilized world. The great 
conflagration of 1871 destroyed Mr. Moody's home and 
church.* " Have you lost everything? " asked a friend. 
" Everything but my reputation and my Bible," he replied. 

Terrible as was the loss and great as was the catastrophe, 
the unconquerable hero set to work about its reparation as 
energetically as after the destruction of Farwell Hall. He 
rushed off East and began a campaign of begging which was a 
supreme work of genius, sending the proceeds back and tele- 
graphing his friends to " build large," a motto that might be 
chosen by him as the best expression of his life purpose and a 
suitable inscription for his tomb. They obeyed him and 
erected a rough building measuring seventy-five by one hun- 
dred and nine feet, and good enough to answer their purpose 
until he could raise funds enough for the great permanent 
structure which he afterwards built at the corner of Chicago 
and LaSalle Avenues. 

It was about this time that there ripened in the mind of 
Mr. Moody a purpose which had probably been long unfolding. 
It was to go to England upon an evangelizing tour. He Had 
already been in England twice, — both times upon religious 
errands — conventions, conferences, etc. 

That first trip will be long remembered for the incredible 
manner in which it was undertaken. He set the day for his 
departure ; but did not have a cent with which to pay his ex- 
penses. However, this did not seem to disturb him in the 



Incident related by Mr. Moody on pa^e 377. 



$6 LI FE OF DWIGHT L MOODY. 

least, for he went on with his preparations as if he had millions 
in a vault. There were still but a few hours left before the de- 
parture of the train, and yet the funds were not in sight. The 
trunks were packed and his family waiting. It was about time 
for some one to turn up with the money, one would think ! 
And sure enough he did ! A friend who thought that he would 
need some " after he reached England," handed him five hun- 
dred dollars ! There have been too many such strange events 
in his life to make it easy to call them mere coincidences. 

During these journeys he had made many friends, some of 
whom had proposed that he should come over to England for 
the purpose of holding a series of conventions, and he now de- 
termined to accept — proposing to Mr. Sankey that he should 
be his companion. There can be no doubt that the determina- 
tion to take this step was attended by mental emotions of a 
peculiar character. If " coming events ever do cast their 
shadows before," some vague conception of what he was to do 
must have agitated him unusually. He passed through the 
only recorded period of profound spiritual disturbance in his 
whole life. " It seemed as if the Lord was taking him to 
pieces," he said. It resulted in a more complete consecration, 
and a full-born desire to " go round the world and tell perish- 
ing millions of a Saviour's love," and the hope of " winning 
10,000 souls for Christ in Great Britain." 



CHAPTER III. 

Mr. Moody and Mr. Sankey Sail for England — Their Arrival in Liver- 
pool — The Sorrowful News that Greeted Them — A Discouraging 
Outlook — "I Will be There to-night " — The First of the Re- 
markable Meetings in Great Britain — An Audience of Eight Per- 
sons — How Interest in the Meetings Grew — Disagreeable Critics 
and Ministerial Sharpshooters — Taking Scotland By Storm — Mr. 
Sankey's " Kist fu' o' Whustles " — The Excitement Spreads 
Among All Classes — Remarkable Scenes — Sweeping through 
Scotland and Ireland — The Evangelists Arrive in London — Mr. 
Moody Questioned by a Conference of Ministers — The Wit, 
Shrewdness, and Candor of His Replies — The Most Wonderful 
Meetings Ever Held in London — Personal Experiences — Dining 
With Mr. Gladstone — Premonition of Sudden Death — Followed 
by an Assassin — Arrest of the Would-be Murderer — Using up 
the " Best Minister in Scotland " — Farewell to London. 

ON the 7th of June, 1872, the two companions sailed 
from New York and landed at Southampton seven 
days later. 
The experiences upon which they entered may well 
be regarded as among the most remarkable which have 
ever befallen men, and as they are to be understood only with 
a full knowledge of the difficulties which they had to surmount 
and the extraordinary results they accomplished, we shall be 
justified in setting before ourselves a clear conception of the 
exact state of affairs which they confronted. 

Here, then, were two young men thirty-three and thirty-five 
years respectively — comparatively unknown in the country 
upon whose shores they had set their feet. A few earnestly re- 
ligious spirits in Great Britain had heard of the rough bush- 
whacking work which they were doing and had extended them 
an informal invitation to undertake their present mission. The 
customs of the country were almost as much unknown to the 

(57) 



58 



LIFE OF DVVIGHT L. MOODY. 



young adventurers as they to the country. They were used 
to handling audiences in their native land ; but so great are the 
differences of national custom that this was more likely to 
prove an obstacle than an advantage. The people among 
whom they were about to begin their labors were less inflam- 
mable, and more conservative, than those to whom they had 
been accustomed. An established church was entrenched in all 
the glory, opulence, and (without disparagement be it said) 
pride of its antiquity and its power. 

Against such odds as these the two resolute youths sternly 
set their faces to make an impression upon this rigid and un- 
responsive life. They had come for large game. It was their 
purpose to excite a wave and not a ripple of religious feeling. 
That they succeeded is now a matter of history, and of great 
history, too, for it has been said by competent judges that 
Great Britain is not the same that it would have been without 
the effect of this campaign. There are those whose minds are 
so constituted (and they are undoubtedly the vast majority) 
who can be interested only or chiefly in those conflicts of op- 
posing forces which involve the outlay of brute strength. The 
shock of hostile armies, the death grapple of great military 
machines, the rout of panoplied battalions by strength or 
strategy, they can comprehend and enjoy. But there are now 
and then a few elect spirits who can perceive the fascination of 
struggles of a different character — those in which invisible 
spiritual forces contend on bloodless fields. To them the 
struggle which now begins will have a higher and more en- 
during fascination. It is the battle of life against death ; of 
two young men from a new world battling with the hoary cus- 
toms and prejudices of the past. To see a ready and pun- 
gent wit ; a sweet and serene temper ; an adroit and invincible 
courage ; a homely but sublime eloquence ; simple but sweet 
songs; a religious zeal pure, noble, consuming — disarm pre- 
judice, conquer bigotry, paralyze opposition, turn curiosity 
into admiration, lead captivity captive, spoil principalities and 
powers, and do it swiftly, unerringly, and gloriously — this 
they think a more edifying and thrilling spectacle than the 



LIFE OF DVVIGHT L MOODY. 



59 



mere struggles of men turned into wild beasts and armed with 
deadly weapons. 

When the daring companions arrived in Liverpool on the 
17th of June they learned to their sorrow that two of the most 
influential of the gentlemen by whom Mr. Moody had been 
invited to England had died. This made it impossible for him 
to begin where he had intended ; but he had a third invitation 
from Mr. George Bennet of York, the secretary of the Young 
Men's Christian Association. He telegraphed a notice of his 
arrival and asked when he should begin his work. The answer 
was to the effect that such was the religious indifference in 
York that it would take at least a month to get the town ready 
for his efforts ! In reply to this not very encouraging response 
Mr. Moody telegraphed " I will be there to-night." He was! 
And after looking the situation over (it would certainly not 
have made any difference what condition he discovered) he 
decided " to go in at once ! " 

The first of that series of remarkable meetings which were 
destined to shake Great Britain was held in a little room in the 
Young Men's Christian Association building, and there were 
eight persons present ! The congregations increased, but 
slowly and through the most herculean efforts of those inter- 
ested. The first week, judged by those crude standards of 
success which men of a different caliber are accustomed to 
apply, were a lamentable failure. But these invincible war- 
riors kept right on, and at the end of a month two hundred and 
fifty people had professed conversion and many church mem- 
bers had been quickened in their spiritual life. 

From York they proceeded to Sunderland, where they be- 
gan against, such odds that it was humorously said by an ob- 
server that " Mr. Moody had one whole minister, three-fourths 
of another, and nothing or next to nothing 'of all the rest to 
help him." Things moved even harder here than in York, for 
he not only encountered indifference, but opposition. The 
preacher was certainly a good target for anyone who wanted 
practice ! He was not an ordained minister. He used strange 
and unusual methods. His theology was crude. Ministerial 



5o LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 

sharpshooters filled him full of holes ; but they could not stop 
his fighting, and victory came at last. 

From Sunderland they went to Newcastle. Their fighting 
blood was now up. Those who wish to see the story of this 
great campaign told in the strictest religious phraseology may 
object to such expression ; but anyone who knew the man will 
see that only military metaphors will do ! The same feelings 
which flamed in the bosoms of Oliver Cromwell and Sir Henry 
Havelock were burning in the heart of this resistless and terri- 
ble fighter — to his honor be it said ! He had a work to do 
which had to be done and he was going to do it ! Like those 
great heroes in every field of human struggle and endeavor, he 
relied on the arm of the Almighty ; but he also made bare 
his own!- 

" We have not done much in York and Sunderland," said 
he, " because the ministers were opposed to us ; but we are 
going to stay in Newcastle till we make an impression and live 
down the prejudices of good people who do not understand 
us." In other words, " we are going to fight it out on this 
line if it takes all summer! " The great warriors are all alike. 

They stayed and they conquered. People began to see of 
what stuff they were made and what they were driving at. A 
perfect furor sprang up around them. The potent spell of 
genius, character, consecration, wit, sweetness, love, had be- 
gun to work. Multitudes thronged from every point of the 
compass to see this strange spectacle. People of influence and 
power began to array themselves on the side of the two men 
who were its germinating causes. Committees waited upon 
them from many places, and besought them to visit many 
cities. They passed triumphantly through Carlisle, Bishop, 
Auckland, Darlington, Shields, and other places, and finally, 
on the 21st of November, 1873, arrived in Edinburgh, where 
great preparations had been made for their coming. This 
was manifestly their Waterloo — to enter and to face this 
metropolis of wealth, of learning, of power, and influence. The 
scene reminds one of that in which the Ayrshire plowman a 
half centurv before had made the same bold venture among the 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. fa 

lions. Some of the greatest preachers in the world had there 
set up a standard by which he must be compared. The com- 
mon people were trained to theological discussions and were 
experts in all the questions of the Law and the Gospels. Preju- 
dices were deeply entrenched, especially against informality 
and the irreverence of Mr. Sankey's " kist fu' o' whustles." 

But the two plain men were now profoundly convinced that 
they were merely the instruments of a divine power and that 
they had nothing to do but to keep humble and be used. They 
therefore plunged into their herculean task without fear. 
From the very first it became evident that the most extraor- 
dinary upheaval of modern times had begun. The city may 
be said to have rocked with it. Every circle of life was agi- 
tated. Dr. Bonar declared at its close that there was scarcely 
a house in the metropolis in which one or more had not been 
won over to a new life. Society, business, politics, were all 
affected. Great waves of influence emanating from this center 
swept through the whole of Scotland. The very material ele- 
ments of civilization felt the tumult, and the students of human 
life were confounded by the phenomenon. No one who did 
not attribute it directly to the influence of God upon human 
life could make head or tail out of it. It was easy enough at 
first to charge it up to superstition and the capacity of human 
nature for emotional excitement. But it was soon proven that 
the excitement was never irrational, not to say immoral. No 
appeal, was ever addressed to the feelings which had not been 
first passed through the reason and the conscience. The ef- 
fects upon character were revolutionary. The drunkard aban- 
doned his cups ; the adulterer resumed the practice of virtue ; 
the thief restored his stolen plunder ; the dishonest gave up 
their ill-gotten gains. Tested by every means which the most 
expert judges knew how to apply, the convulsion was beyond 
all question a spiritual one. It was noticed with profound in- 
terest and surprise that the work was at first more powerful 
among the middle and upper classes than among the lower, 
and, considering the training of the men for their mission, this 
was inscrutable. 



62 LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 

But at length measures were adopted by the great strategist 
to reach all classes. His powerfully organizing mind grasped 
the problem of the sub-division of labor and solved it. Meet- 
ings were multiplied and distributed. Means were adapted 
to ends. The movement became as thoroughly systematized 
as that of a great army, and the details of the scheme were 
originated, grasped, held, swayed by the one master mind at 
the center. No army was ever more thoroughly organized or 
swung with easier power from the tent of a commanding 
general. 

From Edinburgh the two Americans went down to Glas- 
gow, and the same strange scenes were re-enacted there. It 
began to be discovered that the conditions made no difference 
with the results. The master mind knew how to cope with 
them all. Everything became plastic to his touch. The Glas- 
gow meetings were begun in February, and continued with 
various interruptions and excursions to other places until the 
middle of May, when they made another three days' visit to 
Edinburgh, and from there swept through the north of 
Scotland — one might say like a triumphant army, except that 
no one moved but the commanders, who created their legions 
in every city which they entered. To disband an army and 
re-create it every three days in widely separate cities — this is 
unknown in military tactics. 

In these few months the whole of Scotland had been stirred, 
and Mr. Moody, feeling that the movement would now con- 
tinue without his personal effort, accepted an invitation to Ire- 
land. It was in September that the grapple with still other 
difficulties and conditions began ; but he was now assisted by 
the prestige which he had acquired. The same phenomena 
began at once to reproduce themselves, not only in Belfast, but 
in Londonderry and Dublin. For months the waves of this 
profound spiritual excitement rolled in every direction, and in 
December Mr. Moody, leaving it to be taken care of by the 
people who had so heartily sustained him, went over to Man- 
chester. 

Within a week " the most difficult of all English cities to 
kindle by anything but politics was fairly ablaze and the flames 
were breaking out in every direction.'' It is hard to find 
phraseology to describe these phenomena. The w r ords which 
we are obliged to use have been so often uttered in intentional 
or ignorant exaggeration that the mind revolts at again em- 



LIFE OF D WIGHT L. MOODY. fin 

ploying them. But there is nothing else to take their place, 
and the chastened judgment of history confirms their accuracy. 

London remained. Mr. Moody must test his doctrine, his 
influence, his resources, in the metropolis of the world. Any 
other man would have trembled. He was not even flurried. 
" If you want me to come," he said, " you must raise five thou- 
sand pounds for advertising, halls, etc." " We have already 
raised ten," they replied. He went down to have a preliminary 
conference with the ministers. It was a scene long to be re- 
membered. They attacked him with questions from every side 
and upon every subject. In no single display of those remark- 
able powers with which he was endowed did he ever appear so 
utterly bewildering as when subjected to a running fire of 
questions. Those who have seen him thus confronted have 
beheld a display of wit, shrewdness, and candor which stands 
in the forefront of all the exhibitions of the resources of the 
human mind. It was simply impossible to corner him. It was 
a game in which he was never beaten. As a mere display of 
skill and courage and resource it was infinitely more exciting 
than a fencing match. 

" How are you paid? " 

" I have money enough for myself right in my pocket and 
do not ask for a cent." 

" How about the money for the copyrights on your hymn 
books ? " 

" That is all in the hands of a committee to be used for 
public purposes." 

" Is Mr. Sankey doing this to peddle American organs? " 

" No." 

" I am a ritualist. Will you send me all my proper and 
rightful converts ? " 

" I am not here to divide up the profits ; but to get as many 
people as I can to give their hearts to Jesus Christ." 

" Are you going to save the miserably poor? " 

" Yes, and the miserably rich, also." 

And then came that climacteric and triumphant reply which 
deserves to be immortalized and which turned every enemy 
into a loyal and lifelong friend. 

" What is your creed? " 

" It is already in print and in circulation. You will find it 
in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah ! " 

For adroitness, directness, effectiveness, this retort may 



64 LIFE 0F DWIGHT L. MOODY. 

be safely placed alongside any ever given in a crisis by the lip 
of man. 

On the ninth of March he began to fulfill his agreement to 
devote four months to the work of evangelizing the metropolis. 
It was divided into four different sections. The greatest 
rooms to be found in each were secured. Innumerable 
speakers were pledged to their work. The tremendous ma- 
chine began to grind, and the hand upon the crank turned it 
with a power that perhaps was never surpassed in any similar 
undertaking. It must not be regarded as any disparagement 
of any of the other forces or influences at work to thus recog- 
nize the central factor. The singing of his companion was an 
adjunct without which this work could not have been done. 
The help of the ministers and of hundreds of consecrated lay- 
men of the highest order of talent was also indispensable. The 
reverent mind will always keep before it the sublime fact that in 
every such movement dwells that Holy Spirit which is the light 
in all these new creations, the breath that woos into life spiritual 
natures which are dead in trespasses and sins. But it is also 
inevitable that as time passes and we begin to sift and analyze, 
we shall discover more and more clearly that all such great 
movements have their origin in the extraordinary capacities 
of some human being whom God has raised up and prepared 
for his work. And it is no irreverence nor any disrespectful 
hero worship to recognize and applaud and imitate so far as 
possible the methods, the talents, and the power of such a man. 

Considered, then, in this tremendous undertaking, he must 
have the credit of accomplishing a task that, for obstacles over- 
come and results achieved, must be acknowledged to be among 
the greatest achievements of any man in any undertaking what- 
soever. The amount of talent required for this organization, of 
resource for the overcoming of these difficulties, of inspiration 
and enthusiasm for all these efforts, the mere physical strength 
for preaching three and four and five times a day, for staying 
up far into the night to talk personally with converts, and then 
arranging for the prosecution of the campaign, are simply un- 
accountable. 

The work was exactly similar in its character and results to 
all that had gone before. It stirred the great metropolis to the 
depths of its moral and spiritual life. It was like the passage 
of a great steamer through the bed of a river, by which the 
sediment at the bottom is agitated and brought to the surface. 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



65 



It is of course impossible in so brief an essay to substantiate 
the assertions here made. To say that a city so vast was 
" stirred " may mean one thing to one student and another to 
another. Nothing could stir it all but an earthquake ! No 
influence except the bared arm of the Almighty could touch 
every single life of all those millions. But this man and his 
great lieutenant probably affected the entire life of this metrop- 
olis as it has never been affected before, except in times when 
the life of the nation itself had been threatened. To stir a little 
country village is much. To agitate a metropolis of the world, 
this is the evidence of power before which we stand in a sort 
of awe. The mind which has once come under the spell of this 
wonderful campaign in Great Britain turns away from it with 
the same sort of reluctance with which he lays down the story 
of any great epoch or movement of human life. He feels that 
he has come in contact with elemental forces and with ele- 
mental men. 

And it is with a reluctance equally great that he turns away 
from the narrative of Mr. Moody's personal adventures with 
some of the greatest men and women which the age has pro- 
duced. He lived on terms of intimacy with many of them. 
We shall not aim at any chronological order in sketching a 
few. They may have belonged to any one of his several visits. 

Some of his friends were anxious about his health, and 
finally, by a well-laid plan, introduced (against his will) one of 
the most celebrated physicians in London, Sir Henry Somers, 
I think. After asking a good many other questions, the doctor 
said : 

" How often do you preach? " 

" Oh, sometimes five times a day." 

" You are a fool," said the doctor. 

" How many hours do you practice? " asked Mr. Moody. 

" Oh, sometimes sixteen and seventeen." 

" Then you are a bigger fool than I am ! " retorted Mr. 
Moody. 

He once dined with Mr. Gladstone, and the grand old man, 
pointing to the evangelist's stomach and chest (it must have 
been later on, when he had grown stout) said, " Mr. Moody, T 
wish I had a chest and stomach like yours." 

" And I wish I had a head like yours! " he replied, drawing 
his hand under his chin with a significant gesture. 

Unconventional, but familiar; easy, but respectful, he met 
5 



66 LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 

princes, lords, educators, magnates with all the open and fear- 
less courage of a man whom God had just taken from the soil 
of a new continent. He never despised a human being, but 
he never truckled to one. 

The heart suffers an actual wrench to be compelled to turn 
away from that romantic story of his discovery of Henry 
Drummond; the call he gave him, as sweet and potent as the 
call to Saint John ; the beautiful attachment ; the year of un- 
remitting and loyal service of the young recruit to the grizzled 
veteran ; the devotion which never died — it is a beautiful, 
beautiful story. 

How can one leave untold those dramatic and terrible 
dangers and temptations into which he was plunged in this 
maelstrom of excitement? It is impossible to do so altogether. 

Some time during the first few weeks after the inaugura- 
tion of his work the story was circulated that he had done 
something in America which had made the people lose con- 
fidence in him. It came on his work like a frost and bade fair 
to end it, when, just in the nick of time, a letter arrived from 
Chicago, endorsing him in the warmest terms, and signed by 
many of the best known clergymen. 

Such coincidences became mere commonplaces in his alto- 
gether exceptional life ; but perhaps the most dramatic of all 
was the one in one of the Irish towns where he made the state- 
ment that " a man who had ridiculed the meetings, and de- 
clared with an oath that he would never enter them, fell dead 
immediately afterwards." This declaration was challenged by 
a group of infidels who immediately set to work to disprove it. 
They went to the place where Mr. Moody alleged that it hap- 
pened, and, after the most exhaustive search, could not dis- 
cover the slightest evidence of such a tragedy. The results of 
their investigations were published and the most violent on- 
slaught which he had ever experienced followed. It looked as 
if his doom was sealed, for even his most devoted friends could 
not defend him. He consulted with them all, but no one could 
remember exactly where the event occurred. Even Drum- 
mond and Sankey were helpless. Life had never looked so 
dark. He came nearer giving up than at any other moment 
of his existence. But the very next day, after every resource 
had been exhausted, a letter was placed in his hands, locating 
the scene of the tragedy just across the line from the town 
where he had said it had transpired ! The proof was absolute 
and the vindication complete. 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



67 



At one time he was seized with a sudden premonition of 
danger so acute as to shake even his iron nerves. In times of 
such prodigious excitement the most dangerous and fanatical 
cranks are always around. His impression was that one of 
their number was trying to stab him. It grew more and more 
vivid daily, and finally his nerves almost broke under the strain. 
He would leave the meetings unobserved and steal along 
through the shadows, being compelled at times, in sheer nerv- 
ous exhaustion, to lean up against doorposts for support. 

He reproached himself and tried his best to argue down 
the premonition. He locked his windows and his doors and 
did everything he could in self-defense except to employ de- 
tectives. The feeling haunted him for a week, and at the end 
of that time a man was arrested who had been daily dogging 
him with a firm intention of driving a dagger into his heart. 

To choose an anecdote of another type (perhaps the most 
charming which he ever related), let us listen to his own story 
of how he raised the money with which the Carrubers Close 
mission was built in Edinburgh. His intimate friends urged 
him to undertake it, and he finally consented, saying, " Well, 
I will do it if you will furnish me the best minister in Edinburgh 
to go with me and introduce the subject to the people." This 
request was granted, and a fine, delicate, courteous preacher of 
immense personal influence and immeasurably long legs was 
pressed into the service. They started out together, and this 
reverend gentleman preferred modest requests for sums 
ranging from ten to fifteen pounds. 

" I saw," said Mr. Moody, " it was going to take all winter 
at that gait, and so (not daring to criticise him) when we came 
to the next house (that of a very grand and wealthy woman) 
I said, ' How much are you going to ask her for?' 

" Oh, perhaps fifty pounds." 

" I kept still, but when the door opened into the room where 
she was, I just pushed ahead and said : 

" ' Madam, I have come to ask you for two thousand 
pounds to help build a new mission down at Carrubers Close.' 

" She threw up both hands and exclaimed ' Oh, mercy ! 
Mr. Moody, I cannot possibly give more than one thousand.' 

" This reply astonished the timid minister so much that 
he almost fainted, and when they got outside he said, ' You'd 
better go ahead.' And I did ! About two o'clock we went to 
the minister's house for lunch, and while he and his wife were 



(5g LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 

apologizing because the lunch was so cold and small I was 
packing away everything I could lay my hands on so as to be 
sure to have enough to last me through the job. 

" As soon as we had finished, out we went again, and by 
seven o'clock we had raised the whole sum (something like 
$100,000), and I rushed back to the hotel and ate the biggest 
dinner of my life. The next day I left town, and not long after- 
wards received a note saying, ' Well, Moody, you raised the 
money ; but you used up the best minister in Scotland, and we 
had to send him off for a three months' vacation. ' 

The departure of these two men from London and from 
Great Britain was the signal for such a good-bye as was seldom 
ever said to man. They left a different country behind them 
from what they found. Old churches had been revived, new 
ones built, ministers converted or aroused to a new faith, preju- 
dices removed, young men by the thousands rescued from use- 
less lives and turned into heroes, university men quickened to 
spiritual life and sent out upon missions which have since be- 
come famous. 

Surely, unless work done in the realm of the spiritual emo- 
tions is to be judged by standards different from all others 
(and the human element to be eliminated in our study of the 
phenomena, while all is traced to the divine), this exercise of 
power by these two plain men must be reckoned among the 
prodigies of human genius. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Return of the Famous Evangelists to America — Great Preparation 
for Their Home-Coming — Erection of Buildings for Immense 
Audiences — The Campaign in Eastern Cities — Sweeping 
Through the South — A Work That Never Ceased for Twenty- 
eight Years — First Steps Towards Organizing Educational In- 
stitutions at Northfield — Great Results From Small Beginnings 

— The Northfield Seminary for Girls — The Boys' School at 
Mount Hermon — Mr. Moody Grapples with Intricate Problems 

— The Summer School at Northfield — Visited by the Most 
Famous Men of the Times — Marvelous Vacation Work — Cher- 
ished Life Plans — "I'm Trying to Reproduce Myself" — Mr. 
Moody's Fervor, Energy, and Faith — " I'm Awfully Concerned 
About this Matter " — A Man of Action, as well as Words — 
How He Raised the Money to Found and Support His In- 
stitutions. 

THE return of the now famous evangelists to America 
was the signal for an ovation which would have turned 
heads less strong. It was a matter of course that they 
would be called upon by the citizens of their own 
country to try and do for it what they had accomplished for a 
foreign land, and, after a brief rest, they began a campaign not 
less remarkable for numbers influenced, and reaching over a 
territory immensely vaster. Great preparations for their 
coming were made in many of the large cities. Immense 
buildings were constructed (where they did not already exist), 
workers were trained in those original methods which had now 
crystallized into a system, choirs were taught the Gospel 
Hymns, and everything was made ready for their convenience. 
The first meeting was held in Brooklyn (October 24, 1875), in 
the rink on Clermont Avenue, which had sittings for live thou- 
sand people, and other large buildings like Talmage's church 
were pressed into service for the overflow of the enormous 
crowds. The scenes which had characterized the work in for- 
eign countries were from the first moment reproduced at home, 
and as it was evident at once that the impulse which brought 
together these vast concourses was something more than mere 

(69) 



70 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY 



curiosity, the other cities which were watching the movement 
with an almost strained earnestness began confidently to ex- 
pect the same results. 

From Brooklyn they went to Philadelphia, where the same 
wave of enthusiasm followed them, and where, in addition to 
the other invariable results, that of raising $100,000 for the 
Young Men's Christian Association building must be chron- 
icled. 

From Philadelphia they went to New York, where the work 
was as much greater than in other places as the city was greater 
in itself. 

At the end of February, while Mr. Sankey went home for 
a while to rest, Mr. Moody went down to Atlanta, Ga., to help 
his friend Major Whittle in an evangelistic convention, and 
then turning northward through the greater cities of the South, 
like Nashville, Louisville, St. Louis, and Kansas City, reached 
his home in Chicago, where he opened with religious ceremo- 
nies the great church at the corner of Chicago and LaSalle 
Avenues, built during his absence, at an expense of one hun- 
dred thousand dollars, secured through his personal fame and 
efforts. August and September were spent in rest at his boy- 
hood home. In October he returned to Chicago to conduct 
a campaign whose enthusiasm and results were enhanced by 
the pride and interest the people felt in one of their own citizens. 

From Chicago they went to Boston, and, to the surprise 
of all, found no obstacle to their success in either its prejudices 
or its pride. 

A protracted narrative of these meetings and of others like 
them would at last become monotonous. Let it suffice to say 
that in them all, with but slight variation of characteristics and 
effects, the familiar phenomena of hundreds and thousands of 
people awed into silence, moved to tears, driven to repentance, 
and led to reformation were ceaselessly reproduced. 

The fact that he possessed a power which was altogether 
exceptional was now thoroughly demonstrated, and the future 
seemed to open to him a bright prospect of useful and noble 
labors. 

The end of this first trip through America closed an epoch 
in Mr. Moody's life. This is not because he ceased to do what 
he had previously done, but because he began to do something 
else. During all the years whose other work it is now our 
duty to glance at, he continued to perform those prodigies of 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. ^ 

preaching the Gospel regarded by him as the real call of his life. 
Every season saw him moving through the great cities of his 
native land like a whirlwind, or crossing the sea to renew his 
labors in Europe, which he revisited again and again. For 
twenty-eight years from 1871 to 1899, when he died, he kept 
up this work continuously, with only the brief rests which he 
took in the summer. In order to form a true estimate of this 
herculean task one must remember how seldom in the history 
of human life anything of a similar magnitude has been wit- 




^: s 



* < ■ 



MR. MOODY'S HOUSE AT NORTHFIELD IN WINTER, LOOKING EAST. 

nessed. The work of Whitefield and Wesley sinks into insig- 
nificance when compared on the basis of the number of years 
through which it extended, the countries which they evan- 
gelized, and the number of people whom they addressed. 
Wherever Mr. Moody went through all these years, without 
any waning of interest, these vast crowds thronged about him. 
Day and night they surged against doors which had often to 
be closed upon them, up to the very last meeting, in which he 
addressed as great crowds as he had ever faced in his whole 
career. 

It has already been observed that Mr. Moody had never 



7* 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



enjoyed the privileges of an education. This lack he always 
deeply felt ; and early in his career he conceived a desire to se- 
cure for the young people who had suffered this same depriva- 
tion a training which would enable them to accomplish what 
he had done, but to do it even more effectively. Soon after 
his return from Europe he took the first steps towards its ex- 
ecution. The progress of this effort is replete with illustra- 
tions of the peculiar genius of the man. When he had any- 
thing to do he began — no matter where. His sagacious mind 
could be depended on to find a way through the most opaque 
and stubborn obstacles. There is something grimly humorous 
in the sight of a man who knew absolutely nothing about the 
science of education, entering in this bold and almost defiant 
way into a domain of action for which he had had no training 
whatsoever. He did not take any pains to inform himself as 
to methods. He did not ask advice. He simply started. 
Adding a few rooms to his home, he invited some of the daugh- 
ters of neighboring farmers to assemble and begin their studies. 
The interest he took in their welfare, and the inspiration which 
that interest awakened in them, attracted many others, until 
finally the quarters were too small and he was compelled to 
begin enlarging them. Additions were made as fast as the 
occasions demanded, until, through the aid of friends who 
trusted his judgment implicitly, great buildings began to 
spring up like mushrooms in the immediate vicinity of his 
home. The first simple methods of instruction, which partook 
more or less of his own imperfect conceptions of the nature of 
a school training, were abandoned as fast as they were found 
impracticable. Teachers were tried one after another until he 
found someone who knew exactly what needed to be done, and 
into those efficient hands he committed the grave responsibili- 
ties of the rapidly growing school. The first large building 
was erected in 1879. The number of the pupils grew apace, 
until at last there was a large waiting list of applicants who 
could not be accommodated even in the commodious and 
splendid structures which now adorn the beautiful hillside. 

While the Northfield Seminary for Girls was still in its in- 
fancy Mr. Moody decided to commence the same sort of work 
among the boys. A farm of four hundred acres just across the 
Connecticut River came into the market and he bought it. 
The first pupils assembled in the old farmhouse, and when they 
overcrowded it he erected a few brick cottages for their ac- 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



73 



commodation. AH who had the courage to ask for an educa- 
tion were admitted, and they streamed in from all over America 
and Great Britain. Taking this success as an indication that 
he should go forward, he erected dormitories and a large reci- 
tation hall, taking all chances and building as fast as the needs 
demanded, until now there are in these two schools something 
like twenty beautiful and permanent edifices. 

In these two schools from six to eight hundred young 
people are at present receiving a careful training in all the 
more important branches of knowledge. They are certainly 
among the most remarkable and successful educational in- 




DINING-ROOM, MR. MOODY'S HOUSE AT NORTHFIELD. 

stitutions in America. The tuition and board are as low as it 
is possible for them to be, and the instruction is of the very 
highest character. The influences are of course distinctively 
Christian. The dominant idea is that of " the development 
of the spiritual nature," and to this end everything else must 
be subordinated, although the course of intellectual training 
fits both sexes to enter the best colleges or universities in 
America. 

An institution of a different character sprang up a little 
later on, as a sort of offshoot from the girls' school. Having 
a vacant building on his hands for a few months, Mr. Moody 



74 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



invited any young women who wished to study cooking, dress- 
making, nursing, etc., to occupy it and pursue these branches 
along with a course of Bible instruction. This was such a 
happy hit and aroused such a hearty response that the school 
is now a permanent feature in this little educational realm. 

It is not my purpose to describe these schools in detail, but 
only to make them illustrate the character and demonstrate 
the power of their founder. It is the strange genius which 
enabled this uneducated man to grapple with the most in- 
tricate problems of modern education and solve them, which 
arrests and startles our attention. Nothing seemed more cer- 
tain at first from his wild and almost plunging efforts than that 
he had at last grappled with something that would throw him. 
But these twenty years have demonstrated that the great 
wrestler was up to his task. We marvel at the growth of insti- 
tutions like those of Cornell, Chicago, and Leland Stanford 
University. But we must remember that these at Northfield 
were founded by a man who knew nothing of what he was 
doing until he did it, and who, instead of being given un- 
limited money to work with, had to raise every dollar as he 
went along. 

It would have seemed as if these stupendous undertakings 
would have employed — if not have exhausted — the energies 
of a single man : but Mr. Moody never rested as long as any- 
thing else could be done. 

In 1886 it was suggested to him that it might be a feasible 
and valuable idea to invite to Northfield (which had then be- 
come famous for its " Conferences ") delegations of students 
from the different colleges, to hold a sort of " Summer School " 
for Bible study. The suggestion fell in with his notions and it 
was executed. They came from all quarters of the country, 
lived in tents, spent part of the day in earnest work and the 
rest in as earnest play, and came under the vitalizing touch of 
the master spirit of this religious epoch. So great was the 
effect of this conference upon the lives of those who attended 
it that they clamored for its repetition, and it grew at last into 
an established institution. During these conferences some of 
the most important events of the century may be said to have 
transpired. It was here that the " Students' Volunteer Move- 
ment " was born, and that hundreds and even thousands of 
college-bred men have dedicated their lives to the cause of 
Christian missions. Mr. Moody attended and supervised 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



75 



them all, entering not only into the life of the assemblies, but 
into those of the individual men. This Summer School and 
this Student Volunteer Movement must be reckoned with by 
the historian of the religious life of the century. 

These " student " conventions were an afterthought. The 
real " Northfield Convention " was born in 1880. 

Mr. Moody's ideas of the nature of the religious life made it 
inevitable that he would inaugurate some such movement. He 
thought that it was a spiritual law that if men should put them- 
selves in the proper attitude of mind and heart the baptism of 
the Holy Spirit would be bestowed upon them. Nothing 






THE NORTHFIELD 



UDITORIUM. IT HAS A SEATING CAPACITY 
OF THREE THOUSAND. 



seemed to him to conduce more to this than public assemblages 
addressed by men of great spiritual power. He felt that if 
people could be thus gotten together in places where the un- 
divided attention could be given to religious thought the mind 
would be awakened and the soul touched. 

In 1880, therefore, he called a convention at Northfield for 
this purpose. It was well attended and his hopes were realized. 
The people who came received the very stimulus which he 
anticipated. The effect upon their lives was most extraor- 
dinary and justified him in repeating the effort the next year. 
With the exception of the three summers during which he was 



7 6 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY 



absent in Europe, these conventions have been held annually, 
and have been regarded by competent judges as among the 
most potent factors in the religious life of the age. To them 
he gave the best energies and efforts of his life. He always 
brought to them those speakers whom he thought most able 
to awaken the enthusiasms of the divine life, no matter at what 
cost. Many of the most famous men of the age have been 
his guests at these times and have communicated impulses to 
the spiritual natures of the great audiences which will outlast 
life itself. But no matter who was there, Mr. Moody himself 
was always the soul and center of the whole movement. From 
him have always come the noblest and grandest shocks of 
spiritual power. The management of such complex meetings, 
the harmonizing of so many different views, the suppression 
of so much that was erratic, the development of so much talent 
that was latent, have been among the highest proofs of that 
marvelous power whose nature we are trying to fathom. This 
work, it must be remembered, was done in vacation ! All these 
weighty and multifarious occupations were, so to speak, but 
the pastimes of a giant. 

We have not yet finished our enumeration of the feats which 
Mr. Moody accomplished. Another task of a character inti- 
mately associated with what he was doing in Northfield had 
to be worked out. It was perhaps his most cherished life plan. 
He had long before discovered that there were multitudes of 
young people scattered over the country who, if they had the 
opportunity to study the English Bible under favorable circum- 
stances, might develop into useful and successful workers in 
the life of the church. His conception of their availability for 
this purpose was the outgrowth of his modesty. He honestly 
believed that there was nothing remarkable about himself, and 
that there were thousands of people better able than he to ac- 
complish what he had done, if they only would give themselves 
to such work with as much consecration. This conception 
seemed to some of those who knew him the most remarkable 
thing about the man. He actually did not believe himself to 
be possessed of any extraordinary talents. He attributed 
everything which he had done to the " influence of the Holy 
Spirit." He thought that if he could get hold of young men 
and women, impress them with his ideas, get them to seek this 
consecration, furnish them with a good understanding of the 
English Bible, and send them forth into the world, they could 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



77 



turn the world upside down. One of his most common re- 
marks was, " I am trying to reproduce myself; " and every time 
a fine young fellow began to follow and imitate him he seemed 
to be kindled with the hope that he had at last found a spiritual 
child. It was the longing of a mother for offspring. It was 
Paul's passion for spiritual parenthood. When I was pastor 
of his church I brought him several such men. He fixed his 
piercing eye upon them and said, "You want an education? 
What do you want it for? To do good, did you say? Are 
you in earnest? Well, get ready and start for Northfield to- 
morrow ; I will pay your expenses." And then his great brown 
eyes, lit up with an almost maternal tenderness, would follow 
them to the door as if he were dreaming of their future. 

For many different reasons he had been compelled to post- 
pone the accomplishment of his plan for their education from 
year to year; but at last, in 1889, he came to Chicago deter- 
mined to carry it out at all hazards, and I had the good fortune 
to be able to study the operations of his mind during the gesta- 
tion of this great enterprise. It was to me the most impressive 
mental and spiritual exhibition I had ever witnessed. The 
fervor, the intensity of feeling, the prodigious energy of will, 
the confident faith, were like the mighty forces of nature. One 
day a few weeks previous, and while riding with him in his 
buggy in Northfield, he drove up a beautiful and quiet valley 
and began to talk about his plans. His eye kindled. His 
face glowed. Suddenly he stopped the horse, took off his hat, 
and said, in tones that sent a positive physical thrill through 
me, " I am awfully concerned about this matter. Let us pray 
God to help us consecrate ourselves to it ! " That prayer went 
to heaven if anything ever did ! It was propelled by a spiritual 
force that would have carried it across infinity. It filled my 
mind with an indescribable awe. 

When he arrived upon the ground ready to begin, such was 
my curiosity about his mind that I studied its processes as a 
jeweler does the movements of a watch. He came to the scene 
of operation as a general would to a field of battle, seizing with 
lightning-like rapidity upon the strategic positions, utilizing 
every means towards his end ; but utterly without previous 
definite preparation. Very little money (if any) had been 
promised, no pupils were actually in sight, the location had 
not been selected when he swooped down upon the field. 

There were no moments in his life more full of interest to 



7* 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



the student of his strange nature than those in which he was 
incubating (if I may say so) — when his mind was hatching its 
thoughts. His manner was an " absent " one. His eyes 
seemed turned inward. He was not quite as talkative as 
usual, although he " came out of himself " suddenly and easily, 
but sank back again quickly. His brow was not often 
" knitted," and the mental effort was not a painful one, at least 
apparently. Instead of straining itself after a conclusion I 
should have said his mind sank into a quiescent state, as a bird 
sits on a nest, and that his " conclusions " came to him, rather 
than awaited his approach. 

He was in this state of mind for several days, as he moved 
among his friends talking about this new enterprise. I took 
him one clay to look at a building site which seemed to me 
available. He said little, but the first glimpse of it evidently 
brought all his plans to a focus. With lightning-like rapidity 
he secured an option from the owners, and within a few hours 
consummated the bargain. Where he got his money from I 
could never discover, but almost before his friends knew what 
he was about the property (three large residences next the 
church on LaSalle Avenue and a large lot in the rear) was pur- 
chased, and he immediately commenced the erection of a com- 
modious and beautiful building. 

Scarcely were these plans unfolded to the public before 
young men and young women began pouring in from all quar- 
ters of the country, attracted by his fame, his invitation, and 
his promises. Perhaps no movement inaugurated by him 
ever received a more intelligent criticism than this. Many in- 
telligent judges declared the plan unfeasible, and likely to flood 
the country with callow youngsters half fitted for their work. 
One very able article wounded Mr. Moody more deeply than 
anything that had ever been published against him ; but he 
pursued his accustomed course and kept silent, although those 
who watched him closely could see his heart bled. The in- 
stitution was on its feet, like everything else, almost before it 
was born, as all his spiritual and material children struck out 
for themselves at once, like those of fishes. It would take a 
book to describe it and its results. It would require another 
to discuss its merits and defects. The aim of this story of his 
life is to show that he possessed the genius and the power to 
launch it, and to point out the fact that like everything else he 
undertook he made it " go." 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



79 



In connection with this work it may be well to introduce a 
reference to another undertaking which evidenced the prodi- 
gious organizing power of the man, for it was around this school 
as a center that it was made to revolve. I refer to the series 
of meetings held during the World's Fair. Mr. Moody was 
not in sympathy with the Congress of Religions, and this fact, 
combined with the opportunity for such an effort, led him to 
organize a remarkable campaign of religious services lasting 
through many months. They were scattered through every 
part of the city, and their management was entirely in his 
hands. He directed all the movements like a major-general. 
It was his fame and labor which paid the bills. It was his 
faith that sustained his discouraged followers when one night 




D. L. MOODY'S RESIDENCE AT NORTHFIELD, LOOKING SOUTH. 

they found themselves with a deficit of several thousands of 
dollars. " Do not be troubled about a little matter like that," 
he said, and, dropping upon his knees, he laid the case before 
God. It is unnecessary to say that the money came. It 
always did. 

In closing this list of his different enterprises, brief refer- 
ence must be made to the latest offspring of his fertile brain 
and loving heart. It is an organization for the distribution of 
sacred literature. It has two aims, one the dissemination of 
such literature through the prisons of the country, and the 
other its sale for a merely nominal sum, to the masses of people 
who do not enjoy religions privileges. It has grown to enor- 
mous proportions. Immense sums of money have been con- 
tributed for gratuitous distribution and almost innumerable 
copies have been sold. 



3o LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 

All these institutions were under full headway when he died, 
and by his own personal efforts he was raising the money to 
carry them on. The next day after his burial an appeal to the 
world to provide funds for the continuation of the " work be- 
gun and for twenty years carried on by Dwight L. Moody " 
was issued. The plea is entitled " Moody Memorial Endow- 
ment," and begins : 

" ' I have been ambitious, not to lay up wealth, but to leave 
work for you to do,' were almost the last words of D. L. Moody 
to his children. 

"' The institutions founded by Mr. Moody are unique in 
character. They consist of the Northfield Seminary and 
Training School for Young Women, the Mt. Hermon School 
for Young Men, and the Bible Institute at Chicago. The 
Northfield plant consists of 1,200 acres of land and about 
twenty buildings, which, with the present endowment, are 
valued at one and one-quarter million, and is practically free 
from debt. At Chicago the buildings, land, and endowment 
exceed $250,000 in value. The Northfield schools have about 
400 students, each of whom is charged $100 per annum for 
board and tuition. The annual cost is about $200. At Chi- 
cago the amount required, approximately, is $150 each for 300 
students. In brief, therefore, the sum of about $125,000 an- 
nually is required to maintain the work inaugurated by Mr. 
Moody on the principles successfully pursued for the past 
twenty years. This sum has heretofore been largely raised by 
his personal efforts. A fund of $3,000,000 is asked for, which, 
at 4 per cent., will perpetuate the work of Mr. Moody." 

To complete this glimpse of the herculean labors of the 
man it will be a pleasure, no doubt, to see the following 
enumeration of the buildings erected through his efforts. 

His first building was the Illinois Street Church in Chicago, 
erected about 1858, for the shelter of his mission school and 
the church which grew out of it. His second building enter- 
prise was the Young Men's Christian Association building in 
Chicago, erected in 1866, the first commodious edifice for 
Young Men's Christian Association purposes in this country. 
His third enterprise was the re-erection of the first Young 
Men's Christian Association building destroyed by fire, both 
known as the Farwell Hall. This also was destroyed in the 
great fire in 1871 and again rebuilt, mainly through Mr. 
Moody's efforts. The fourth and present beautiful edifice 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. gj 

stands partly upon the original site on land given by John V. 
Farwell. The other Young Men's Christian Association 
buildings in America for which money was raised by Mr. 
Moody and in whose erection he was more or less conspicuous 
were at New York, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Bal- 
timore, and Scranton. 

In Great Britain these buildings were erected by Mr. 
Moody's personal efforts or from the inspiration of his works : 
Christian Union building, Dublin ; Christian Institute build- 
ing, Glasgow; Carubber's Close Mission, Edinburgh; Confer- 
ence Hall, Stratford ; Down Dodge Hall, Wandsworth, Don- 
don, and the Young Men's Christian Association building, 
Diverpool. In addition to the above are twenty or more build- 
ings at Northfield, Mass., the Chicago Avenue Church, and 
Bible and Institute buildings, Chicago. 



CHAPTER V. 

Mr. Moody's Wonderful Capacity to Stand Hard and Continuous 
Labor — Always "Ready for Business" — His Disregard of 
Ordinary Laws of Health — " Have You Got Anything" to Eat? " — 
His Miraculous Power to Stand Fatigue — His Intellectual and 
Moral Endowments — Looking into the Faces of More than One 
Hundred Million People — His Wonderfully Retentive Mem- 
ory — A Life of Incessant Activities — How He Treated Men he 
Personally Disliked — Dropping Men as if They Were "Hot 
Coals " — His Devotion to His Friends — Standing by Henry 
Drummond — How Drummond's Death Affected Mr. Moody — 
His Great Will Power — His Humility and Modesty — Refusing 
an Offer of $25,000 for His Autobiography — Offered $10,000 by 
a Newspaper for a Two-Hours Interview — The Power of His 
Eye — Did He Possess the Gift of Hypnotism? 

IT has seemed proper to pursue the general course of Mr. 
Moody's life in a chronological sequence, and then to 
present a bird's eye view of the particular undertakings 
which he has originated, in order that confidence may be 
established in the claim that his character is one of the richest 
and most wonderful of modern times. It follows as a matter 
of course that those peculiar characteristics must be studied 
and analyzed if we are to discover the sources of his power. 

It is too soon to succeed in this, but not too soon to begin, 
and it will be the purpose of the last part of this sketch to point 
out some of those strange gifts and indicate the lines along 
which further investigation must go. 

Let us begin at the physical basis of life. He came into the 
world with a body endowed with the capacity to stand such 
strains as have been put upon few others in the history of the 
world. It seemed to have been constructed of steel and to 
have been incapable of exhaustion, and almost of fatigue. He 
did not need much sleep, and what he did need he could get at 
any time and under any circumstances, falling into peaceful 
slumber the instant he touched the pillow. No matter how 
late he retired he was likely to be up at five or, at the latest, 

(32) 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. g^ 

six o'clock, and, after a ride or a walk, was " ready for bus- 
iness." 

His digestive powers were of the most perfect character. 
He appeared to be able (and inclined) to break all the ordinary 
laws of health. He would drink four or five glasses of water 
during a meal. He ate with the greatest rapidity and scouted 
Mr. Gladstone's rules of chewing each mouthful seventy times 
— with humorous contempt. Dashing into my house one even- 
ing after a day of terrific effort, he exclaimed, " Have you got 
anything to eat ? " A large dish of pork and beans (of which 
he was very fond) was placed before him. He sat down, mur- 
mured a silent prayer, and, without interrupting his repast by 
a word, emptied the entire dish as fast as he could carry the 
food to his mouth. And yet this was done with a certain in- 
definable grace ! He often ate voraciously, but never like an 
animal nor ever like an epicure. 

In the later years of his life Mr. Moody's weight increased 
to more than three hundred pounds. Such bulk as this be- 
comes an irreparable misfortune to most men, for they become 
sluggish and appear gross. Neither consequence followed 
with him. He was as light upon his feet as a boy, and the 
spiritual qualities in his personal appearance were not even 
cloaked. 

In spite of this incumbrance his capacity for work was little 
short of miraculous. The physical vitality of the average min- 
ister is pretty severely taxed by the delivery of two or three 
public addresses in the week. Mr. Moody often delivered 
four and five in a day, five days a week through nine or ten 
months of the year, and then in vacation performed the hardest 
labors of his life. These efforts, until the very last trip, seemed 
to be mere gymnastic exercises to keep him in condition. 

Passing from his physical to his intellectual endowments, 
his biographer will awaken surprise, and, perhaps excite in- 
credulity ; for it must be deliberately asserted that he pos- 
sessed one of the most highly organized brains which the world 
has ever produced. He was not a " thinker " in the ordinary 
sense of that word. Whether it would have been possible for 
him to have become an original investigator like Edison, or 
profound philosopher like Emerson, is a matter of mere specu- 
lation ; but his contribution to the store of original thought is 
very meager. He did not originate thought. He only appro- 
priated it. He did not even create a new phraseology. He 



84 LIFE OF DVVIGHT L. MOODY. 

simply seized upon that of daily life and breathed a new vitality 
into it. Compared with a man like F. W. Robertson, to whose 
pages the noblest intellects of the age have gone for fertilizing 
thoughts, Mr. Moody cannot in any sense be called an intel- 
lectual force. But it is not by logical reasoning merely that 
the grandeur of the human intellect is shown. The mind has 
another power not less wonderful. While some of the great 
geniuses of history have been compelled to arrive at conclu- 
sions through long and subtle processes of reasoning, others 
have reached them by a mental spring as swift as lightning. 
This is the power which we call "' intuition," and it was this 
power which Mr. Moody possessed to a degree which filled the 
minds of those who knew him with wonder. I never knew him 
to pass through such processes of " reflection " as bring out 
the best results of most men's thinking. All he seemed to re- 
quire was to have a given problem set before him in the clearest 
light possible, and he instantly saw the answer in all its bear- 
ings. It was like the mental operation of those mathemati- 
cians who astonish the world by their power to compute with- 
out addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division. 

No single intellectual talent was more often the subject of 
remark than his memory for names and faces. He had un- 
questionably looked into the countenances of more people than 
any man who ever lived (100,000,000, Arthur T. Pierson esti- 
mates), and had made the personal acquaintance of more in- 
dividuals than many of us have ever seen. And yet he seemed 
never to forget any of those who had once made a distinct and 
positive impression upon his mind ! He could tell you the 
names of the " leading men " (a favorite expression) in Lon- 
don, Edinburgh, Dublin, Boston, New York, San Francisco, 
St. Louis, Atlanta, or any other place in which he had ever 
been. 

Such gifts as these are certainly not always accompanied 
by those of a fine moral character ; but Mr. Moody was in- 
tensely and almost perfectly ethical. His ideas of truth and 
honor and virtue were most exalted. No attack has ever been 
made upon him here. He was incorruptible. Thrown into 
ten thousand delicate situations with women, and difficult ones 
with men, handling enormous sums of money and never com- 
pelled to render an account, he stands before the world a 
monument of fidelity and of purity, unsmirched, uncondemned, 
and even unsuspected. 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 85 

He and Herbert Spencer were far enough apart theologi- 
cally, but his heart would have responded to that noble senti- 
ment of the great philosopher, " Rightness expresses of actions 
what straightness does of lines ; and there can no more be two 
kinds of right action than there can be two kinds of straight 
lines." 

It is no uncommon thing in life to see men of such extraor- 
dinary intellectual and moral endowments, cold, hard, just, and 
unloving. But tears start to the eyes of those who knew Mr. 
Moody well, at the thought of the absolutely inexhaustible 
depths of his love for all living things. Horses, dogs, cows, 
animals, and birds — all excited the emotions of his heart. In 
the realm of human life, love for all classes was a master 
passion. Misfortune, poverty, ignorance, crime even, could 
not throw anyone out of the pale of his universal sympathy. 
He had his antipathies, but they were not directed against any 
class. They were as likely to be aroused by the rich as by the 
poor, by the learned as the ignorant. These antipathies were 
never enmities. He had no hard feelings. He was simolv 
repelled. He gave men a wide berth if he did not like them. 
But if he did he opened his heart to its utmost capacity. Little 
children, whether his own, his grandchildren, or the children 
of strangers, fled to his arms as to those of a mother. There 
never has been a home outside of Eden more filled with the 
divinity of love than his. To be in it, to see the play of affec- 
tion, the absolute confidence and rest of love, was a beautitude. 

There will be readers of these statements who will, how- 
ever, raise one complaint against him. They will say that al- 
though he loved ardently he did not love forever. There are 
those who have been stung by what seemed to them desertion, 
and it is here that those who knew him best will have to defend 
him from the charge of disloyalty. That defense is simple. 
What seemed desertion was not really such. He was a man 
whose life was one of incessant and terrible activities. He 
needed helpers. When he found them he laid hands on them 
with a sort of affectional violence. He gave them his whole 
heart and trusted them implicitly. If the time came when they 
were no longer of service to him he dropped them and sought 
others. There is no use denying that when he dropped men 
it was as if they were " hot coals," and it was impossible for 
those from whom he had received such loyal and almost pas- 
sionate devotion at one time not to feel as if he were unkind 



86 LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 

and untrue when he turned away. But how could it be other- 
wise? Could he keep up intimacies with the thousands of 
people who at one time or another had been his lieutenants? 
It was a physical and mental impossibility. Sometimes those 
who had been thus abandoned had a chance to test that mem- 
ory and that love, and it is safe to say that there came to them 
revelations of an unbroken and unqualified affection such as 
filled them with delight. The depth of that devotion, the utter 
consistency of that affection, can be proven by a thousand cases, 
but none would be more striking and interesting than that 
of his loyalty to Henry Drummond. It is now a matter of 
history how violently Drummond was attacked in Northfield 
during Mr. Moody's absence, for his advocacy of views which 
were regarded as erroneous in that supremely orthodox place. 
Mr. Moody was in the midst of his campaign in Chicago at the 
time, and many of his most generous supporters wrote and 
telegraphed that " if he did not denounce Drummond they 
would abandon him." Instead, he destroyed their messages, 
and, sending for Drummond, said : " I want you to take part 
in my meetings." With his accustomed grace and considera- 
tion the great author replied : " I should only injure you in- 
stead of your sustaining me." " Preach some of your old ser- 
mons," said Mr. Moody. " No, I would rather not take any 
part," Mr. Drummond replied. " Well, wherever you go or 
whatever you do, I am your friend, and I will stand by you with 
the last drop of my blood," said the old fidus Achates, and he 
did. He was in Cincinnati when the news of Drummond's 
death came, and that evening at my table he laid his knife and 
fork down and cried like a child. " He was the most Christlike 
man I ever met. I never saw a fault in him," he said over and 
over again through his sobs. No, do not let anyone do him the 
injustice of calling him unfaithful ; it was only the lack of time 
and opportunity. It is one of the strangest coincidences of 
history that these two great men should each say of the other 
" He is the most Christlike man I ever knew." 

All these traits would have had their beauty and value in a 
nature that was gentle, yielding, and lacking in vigor and pur- 
pose ; but they would not alone have fitted a man to do a work 
which was almost co-extensive with Christendom. It was 
necessary that they should be animated by a will whose power 
was commensurate with their beauty. Fortunately for the 
world this sublime endowment was not lacking. Behind all 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY 



87 



these other great gifts lay a force whose nature we do not and 
probably cannot understand. We call it " will power." It is 
that energy which impels the mind and body with resistless 
power along any path which it has chosen. In Mr. Moody it 
was like compressed air, powder, or electricity. Whenever a 
thing had to be done he sprang to it as a projectile leaps from 
a cannon, and nothing could stop his progress. He knew 
nothing of those periods of halting and hesitation, nothing of 
those hours of doubt and uncertainty which paralyze so many 
strong arms. To decide was to will, and to will was to do. To 
cite all available instances of this would be to rehearse the 
whole of his life story. One naturally chooses those which 
have come under his own observation. 

During a visit in the rented house in which I lived in Chi- 
cago it became evident to him that a parsonage for the church 
was desirable. When this decision was reached he said sud- 
denly, " I guess I will go and get one." Seizing his hat he 
rushed from the house, and within a few hours returned in a 
cab. Springing up the steps and bursting into the room he 
exclaimed, " Get on your hat and show me the house you 
want. Mrs. McCormick has given me the money." We 
started out and within a few moments he had purchased a resi- 
dence worth ten or twelve thousand dollars. 

This may be taken as a sample of innumerable instances, 
and, in fact, as the rule of his volitional action. Difficulties 
were nothing when opposed to the accomplishment of any 
cherished plan. They only served to stimulate all his powers, 
call out new resources, and lend actual joy to effort. Up to 
the very last hour the exercise of these powers seemed unat- 
tended with anything like discomfort. He put them all forth 
in the same way that boys do theirs, in that period where they 
do anything and everything to work off their surplus energies. 
Those great words which he uttered on his deathbed were the 
absolute truth. He had been " ambitious for work." He 
joyed like a Titan in struggle and effort. 

Upon these basal elements his " spiritual nature " was 
erected. Perhaps it would be impossible to define that ex- 
pression in such a way as to gain the assent of all classes of 
readers. There may be those interested in the man, as a man, 
who do not themselves believe in the spiritual nature nor in 
the spiritual realm. But there can be no room to doubt that 
whatever other men might think, he believed with all the ardor 



gg LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 

and conviction of his intense nature that his soul was his true 
self. While he lived amidst visible, tangible, and audible 
things, he continually felt the presence of that which was be- 
yond the reach of sense. An invisible realm was the real en- 
vironment of his life. He gauged all his conduct and his effort 
by their relation to the life beyond the grave. Perhaps no man 
of modern times has come any nearer to being constantly in 
that state of mind by which Moses was characterized when it 
was said of him " he endured as if he really saw the invisible ! " 
As a motive of conduct, it made no difference whether he really 
saw it or not. His impression of it was more vivid than that of 
the world of matter. It animated everything and interpreted 
everything. His consciousness of God was equally distinct. It 
was as real to him as that of any other person whatsoever — 
friend or child or wife. To most of us, tormented by invincible 
doubts, this seems incredible and impossible ; but his belief in 
an ear that was ever open and a hand that was ever outstretched, 
was like that of a little child in the presence of its mother at 
the bedside in the dark. The reality of the Saviour's life and 
of his constant nearness was not less distinct, and there was a 
spirit — a Holy Spirit, brooding over him and taking posses- 
sion of him at every moment of his life. I mean all this to be 
taken literally. I mean it to seem to those who read this story, 
as being something different from the dull, dreamy, vague 
feelings of the ordinary man with regard to these great spiritual 
facts. The things which to most of us are mere theories or 
hopes were to him burning realities. They glowed before 
his imagination like fire instead of gleaming with the faint 
radiance of phosphorus. We linger with an irresistible fascina- 
tion over the problem of this power — a power which shook 
men to the center of their beings ; suddenly disclosed another 
world ; agitated dull consciences ; aroused slumbering emo- 
tions ; brought to life dead memories, and filled men with a 
sense of the realities of things which they had thought to be 
only dreams. We regard it as a mystery demanding our best 
efforts at solution. 

The simplest way to dispose of it was to say, as he did : " It 
was the Holy Spirit." He always and utterly repudiated the 
idea that there was anything exceptional about himself, and 
multitudes of his friends substantiated his simple theory. It 
is easier to let it go at this ; but it does not seem to satisfy our 
reason. It is like explaining the phenomena of a vast factory 



LIFE OF DVVIGHT L. MOODY. $g 

in which enormous masses of raw material are transformed 
into objects of loveliness and usefulness by saying, " this was 
all done by electricity! " It is true that it was. This is the 
stupendous force that drives all the marvelous machines. But 
are the machines themselves nothing? Is it not necessary to 
explain the delicate mechanism through which the inscrutable 
force transmits itself? And is it not just as necessary to an- 
alyze the marvelous organism of the living man through whom 
God pours that resistless tide of energy? It does not seem 
fair to ignore the instrument entirely. There was a rugged 
sort of righteousness in that irreverent outbreak of Ethan Allen 
when the clergyman was ascribing the power of that great Ti- 
conderoga victorv to Almighty God, " Don't forget to mention 
Ethan Allen ! " 

There are always two factors — the motive power and the 
instrument. It is the latter with which we are now concerned, 
and even though the man himself refused (and with passion) 
ever to admit that there was anything exceptional about his 
nature, we must be true to our conviction that no ordinary man 
can be thus used, any more than a toy engine on a parlor table 
can be made to transmit the electrical current which propels 
a hundred street cars ! No more convincing proof of this can 
be urged than the fact that out of all the multitudes of men who 
strove to produce similar results not one of them has ever done 
more than shine by a sort of reflected light. And yet many of 
them were among the most beautiful and consecrated spirits 
of modern times ! 

No, it cannot be reasonably doubted that he was endowed 
with numerous gifts of so high an order as to make him an 
instrument capable of the transmission of this divine power 
(whatever it may be) to a higher degree than other men. His 
own incredulity and modesty as to these gifts were among the 
most striking proofs of their existence. After his return from 
the army, where he had performed some of those prodigious 
efforts in the Christian Commission, he was loudly praised by 
some of his friends upon a public occasion. " Strike me ; but 
do not praise me," he exclaimed passionately. 

One day a mutual friend introduced him to " Uncle Johnnie 
Vassar/' The old man's face glowed with more than wonted 
luster as he grasped Mr. Moody's hand and heartily exclaimed, 
"And so this is dear Brother Moody? How glad I am to 
see the man that God has used to win so many souls to Christ ! " 



9 o 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



: ' You say rightly, Uncle John, ' the man whom God has 
used, ' " said Mr. Moody, earnestly ; and, stooping down, he 
took up a handful of earth, poured it out of his hand, and 
added, " There's nothing more than that to Dwight Moody, 
except as God uses him." 

I once asked him why he so persistently refused to have his 
name attached to the Clermont Avenue Church. "Why? 
Because I am no more than any other man. And besides, who 
knows but that I may do something to disgrace it ! " Ponder 
the following quotation from a letter written long ago in 
answer to a request for permission to write his life. " Now in 
regard to the other thing, I am quite taken back. I have never 
thought of anything of the kind (a full and authoritative biog- 
raphy). It seems to me there are so many books now that 
there is not room for one more. And I do not know of any- 
thing that can be said of my life that would interest people." 
And yet, within two years after that letter was written, he told 
me with his own lips that he could sell his biography at any 
moment for $25,000, and that when he was in New York he 
was offered $10,000 for a two hours' interview by an agent of 
one of the great newspapers ! 

What can be made of such mysterious contradictions? 
There is absolutely no explanation except that of the child- 
like simplicity of the man, and the strange and bewildering 
vividness of his consciousness of the indwelling of the divine 
Spirit. 

T cannot refrain from giving another illustration of this 
modest)-. I had often felt the immeasurable and unaccount- 
able power of Mr. Moody's eye. I had observed with un- 
bounded astonishment the strange fascination which he seemed 
to have for everyone who came near him. Crowds surrounded 
him by day and by night. In fact, it might almost be said that 
he was never alone. People gathered around him like moths 
around a candle. They made absurd excuses to approach 
him. They simply thronged upon him wherever he went. He 
literally had to shake them off. 

The more I observed this, the more it seemed to me as if 
he must possess that subtlest of all gifts which we vaguely call 
" hypnotism," and wondered if he had ever thought of it him- 
self. A most favorable opportunity to ask him sprang out of 
a conversation in which he had described at length Henry 
Drummond's well-known hypnotic powers. " Do you possess 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



91 



this power? " I said, looking him directly in the eye. " Not 
if I know myself! " he answered, hotly. " If I thought my in- 
fluence was owing to that I would quit preaching to-morrow. 
Any power I have comes from the Spirit of God." 

" But how do you know that such a subtle power as this 
may not be one of the very highest gifts of God, and that it is 
only when it is perverted (like perverted eloquence) that it 
does harm ? " 

" I don't know anything about it, and I won't have anything 
to do with it ! " he answered, with that sharp toss of his head 
with which he dismissed a disagreeable subject. 




MR. MOODY'S STUDY. 



" But don't you think you may exercise it unconsciously? " 
I persisted, determined to satisfv mv mind. 

" No." 

" Did you ever try? " 

"No!" 

I could get nothing more out of him, but I was not con- 
vinced, and I have never doubted that he possessed it to an 
enormous degree and used it without knowing that he did so. 

However this may have been, the fact which now concerns 
us is that he did not consider himself a man of any great natural 
gifts, but only one who had given himself up as fully as he 



Q2 LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 

knew how to the influences of the Holy Spirit. Early in his 
career he heard Henry Varley say, " It remains for the world to 
see what the Lord can do with a man wholly consecrated to 
Christ." This idea took a tremendous hold upon him, and he 
determined to be that man if possible. Any man in any line 
of work who gives himself up with such devotion must see 
great results. When he happens to be a man endowed as Mr. 
Moody was, he will see miracles. It is certain that what Var- 
ley asserted could not be truthfully reiterated since Mr. 
Moody's death. 

To sum the matter up, there are two objects of interest for 
the student of this life — the complex nature of the instrument, 
and the divine power which worked through it. The scientist 
will perhaps care only to analyze the instrument and the fanatic 
to magnify the divine power. But the calm and reverent stu- 
dent of the mystery of existence will stand in admiration before 
one and in worship before the other. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Mr. Moody's Theology — His Power as a Preacher — What he Re- 
garded the Most Fascinating Doctrine in the Bible — His Belief 
that Things Were '* Going to the Bad " — Waiting for The Final 
Crash " — His Fine Sense of Humor — His Unshaken Belief in 
the Bible — His Broad Sympathies — His Oratory and Pulpit 
Power — Born With a Silver Style in His Mouth — Characteristics 
of His Platform Addresses — His Limited Vocabulary — His 
Source of Illustrations — Drawn from Real Life — "Corner 
Groceries " in Noah's Time — How he Secured the Sympathy and 
Attention of an Audience — His Intense Energy on the Plat- 
form — Conditions that Aroused His Highest Powers — His Ideal 
of Music, and the Use he Made of it — Electrical Effect of Some of 
His Sermons — His Last Sermon, and His Last Audience. 

LET us now pass from Mr. Moody's natural endowments 
to a cursory view of his theology and his preaching. 
His theology was full of the charm naivete. It was 
rather that of a child than a man. Two words will 
characterize it — " evangelical " and " conservative." The 
greatest emphasis of his preaching may be said to have been 
laid upon the " blood atonement " in the death of Christ, and 
the immediate salvation of any one who accepted the redeem- 
ing merits of his death, by an act of faith. The language he 
used to -enforce and illustrate these ideas must have often 
seemed to those who were profound students of theology to 
have bordered dangerously upon materialism. He often 
described the efficacy of the " blood " of Jesus in such a way as 
to communicate an absolute shock to those who had accepted 
the theories of the atonement propounded by such men as 
Robertson and Bushnell. But however much his utterances 
may have been clouded by the difficult symbols and metaphors 
in which the death of Jesus had to be presented, it is certain 
that it was the dying love in the vicarious sacrifice of the Son 
of God which stirred his soul to its depths and enabled him to 
stir the souls of others. A very slight alteration in the sharp- 

(93) 



94 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



ness and literalness of his views took place in the passing years 
and is recorded in some of his own words. 

" There was a time when I used to think more of the love of 
Jesus Christ than of God the Father. I used to think of God 
as a stern judge on the throne, from whose wrath Jesus Christ 
saved me. It seems to me now I could not have a falser idea 
of God than that. Since I have become a father I have made 
this discovery: that it takes more love and self-sacrifice for the 
father to give up the son than it does for the son to die." As it 
is not our purpose to criticise, but only to record his views, this 
brief passage will serve as well as many pages to set them 
clearly forth. 

A second leading idea in his theological system was that 
of the Pre-millenial coming of Jesus Christ. Next to the 
" Atonement " it was to him the most fascinating doctrine in 
the Scriptures. He was theoretically a pessimist, believing that 
things were " going to the bad," and must continue to do so 
to a " final crash," before the Christ could come again. He 
considered the world a sinking ship and that his sole duty was 
to save all he could from the wreck. The theory of evolution 
never even appealed to his imagination. The whole world of 
modern ideas rolled over him like the waters of a brook over 
a stone. The conception of the " shipwreck " satisfied his 
scientific and his theological ideas perfectly. Nothing but his 
fine sense of humor could have saved him from being mourn- 
fully crucified upon this theory and sinking into an inert de- 
spair. It did save him, however, and no one who knew 
him can help being thankful for that saving grace. He never 
took himself too seriously. It was this grace that saved 
Abraham Lincoln from despair, and Martin Luther from fanati- 
cism. If Calvin had possessed it, the history of the world 
would have been different; 

A third dominant tone in the limited gamut of Mr. Moody's 
theology and the one which involved him in the only contro- 
versy in which he ever indulged, was the " verbal inspiration " 
ot the Scriptures. He said, and he firmly believed, that the 
whole Scripture was like a chain, which if it were broken in any 
single link, become useless altogether. The tendency among 
modern scholars to take a more liberal view, he regarded as 
dangerous in the extreme and worthy of the severest castiga- 
tion. It was in the administrationof these rebukes that for the 
only time in his life he said things which might be considered 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



95 



uncharitable, and which forfeited for him a little of that con- 
fidence reposed by the people in his infallible common sense. 
This seemed all the more strange, because in all his previous 
career he had avoided such criticisms, and put into a minor 
place all those doctrines which did not command what might 
almost be called universal assent. There was such a grim con- 
sistency and a grim humor in his theories that those who liked 
them least enjoyed them most ! To hear him in some moment 
of terrific intensity and conviction declare : " You can't throw 
away a part of the Bible and keep the rest. Most of those parts 
which the critics want to throw out are those on which Jesus 
Christ himself has set his seal. I am sure I do not want to be 
wiser than my Master" — half made the most stubborn 
scholars doubt the results of life-long investigations. 

" I don't understand the Bible," he said: " I don't explain 
portions of it; I don't interpret it; but I do believe it. I don't 
understand astronomy or higher mathematics, yet I believe in 
them. It is because we can't understand the Bible that I love 
it. One can see that it is God's work. There is a length to 
it, a breadth and depth which we can't understand, but which 
leads us to a height which we can't understand either." 

Scholars might differ with him, but they could not help 
respecting him. He roiled them, but they loved him. He 
was harsh against them, but he turned around and asked them 
to come and address his Northfield pupils — the greatest con- 
fidence he could bestow. A man who could invite Henry 
Drummond, and Lyman Abbott, and George Adam Smith to 
speak to those whose spiritual welfare was dearer than life, is 
as broad in his sympathies as we can ask him to be. 

In the main, his theology could be found as he told the 
London ministers, in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. 

Next in interest to the ideas which constituted his message, 
are his literary style and his oratory. 

In its last analysis, the literary style of every successful 
writer or speaker must be considered a native endowment, and 
happy is the man who finds himself upon his first appearance 
in print or on the platform uttering his thoughts in a way to 
please the people. 

Mr. Moody had the good fortune to be born with a silver 
style in his mouth. His first recorded utterances possess the 
same essential literary characteristics as those which are the 
fruit of all these years of practice. It can be best characterized 



9 6 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



as " telegraphic " — and it was a style unknown to Tertullian 
or to Blair. It is the outgrowth of the struggle of modern 
men to save time. The electric telegraph has compelled a 
recognition of the fact that ten words can convey as definite 
and important an idea as ten pages. 

Mr. Moody seemed to seize the idea that his messages were 
to be delivered over wires kept hot, and that there was neither 
time nor money to be wasted in their delivery. Brevity, pre- 
cision, perspicuity, were from the first their prevailing traits. 
Words and sentences fell from his lips with rapidity and clear- 
ness. 

In passages of the same length (about 530 words chosen at 
random from printed sermons) I have estimated that Mr. 
Moody uttered thirty-six sentences; Bushnell, twenty; Spur- 
gion, twenty-one; Lacordaire, fifteen; Chalmers, nine. 

It would seem as if such brevity would have rendered his 
speech unmusical; but this was far from being the case. There 
was a flow and smoothness to its movement which gave an 
actual pleasure to the ear. In passages of intense excitement 
the sentences possessed an explosive quality suggesting a pack 
of fire crackers set off by accident; but after he had gained 
control of his vocal organs, and of his inflammable emotions, 
there was nothing of this character. 

As the brevity of his sentences was a marked characteristic 
of his style, so was that of his words. His vocabulary was ex- 
ceedingly limited; but exactly adapted to his use. Among 
his words those of three or four syllables are rare. He seemed 
incapable of uttering them. One of the facts which his old 
friends recalled with roars of laughter was his effort to master 
the word " Mephibosheth," when beginning his ministry. He 
committed its spelling to his memory, and on his parish visits 
was heard struggling with its pronunciation — Meph-Mephib- 
phib-bo-bo-bo-sheth, etc." He never attempted such a word 
in public unless it was absolutely necessary, fearing them as a 
traveler does a ditch which is just a little wider than he can 
jump. He did not draw the line absolutely on every thing but 
Anglo Saxon words, nor did he prefer them from any definite 
theory of their value, for he probably could not have picked 
out the Latin or Greek words in any sentence he ever uttered; 
but they certainly predominated and gave an intense vigor 
to his style. 

In a page of 530 words, 400 contained only a single syllable, 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. gy 

and most of them are Anglo Saxon. Many of his longer 
words were terribly shortened, terminals like " ing " being 
almost invariably abbreviated to " in". B. F. Jacobs used to 
say that D. L. Moody was the only man living who could say 
" Jerusalem " in two syllables. 

In his earlier days, in Chicago, an over-zealous critic, who 
was not an over-active worker, took Moody to task for his 
defects in speech. 

" You oughtn't to attempt to speak in public, Moody; you 
make so many mistakes in grammar." 

" I know I make mistakes," said Moody, " and I lack a 
great many things; but I'm doing the best I can with what 
I've got. But, look here, my friend, you've got grammar 
enough, what are you doing with it for Jesus Christ?" 

His illustrations were always of the simplest possible char- 
acter and abounded largely in personal reminiscences. They 
were sometimes classical, for he had listened to so many elo- 
quent speakers that striking stories from antiquity became 
familiar to him without his having to discover them through 
reading. 

There were a few scientific ones which he acquired from 
the same source, and occasional tropes and metaphors indi- 
cated that he had observed natural analogies. But in the main 
his illustrations were naratives of real life. As he told the 
story of Noah's warnings before the Flood, he pictured the 
scoffers of that day while the Deluge was delayed. 

" They'd say to one another, ' Not much sign of old Noah's 
rainstorm yet/ They'd talk it over in the corner groceries, 
evenings." 

Then, as if in explanation, he added: 

" I tell you, my friends, before the world got as bad as it 
was in Noah's day, they must have had corner groceries." 

When contrasted with Demosthenes and Cicero, Burke 
and Chatham, Webster and Sumner, this sort of speech may 
not be called oratory ; but if oratory is " just whistling to a dog 
— while eloquence is whistling so as to make him come " — 
then this was eloquence! At any rate no human being since 
time began has ever gotten the ears of so many listeners. 

I have been re-reading John Brown's description of a ser- 
mon delivered by Thomas Chalmers in a little village in Scot- 
land, and Gilfillan's of the preaching of Edward Irving, and the 
best accounts of the results which Finney, Edwards, White- 
7 



9 8 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



field, and Wesley produced, asking myself in the meanwhile 
whether Mr. Moody could be honestly compared with them. 
Are we to place him among the great preachers of the ages as 
well as among its great organizers and inspirers? For one I 
cannot doubt it. 

He had the physical capacities of a great orator. His body 
was robust and powerful, capable of enduring immense strain, 
and filled with that strange energy which absolute physical 
health imparts. He also possessed those two other qualifica- 
tions of a great orator, a piercing and commanding eye, and a 
voice of great resonance and command over vast reaches of 
space. His eye was a deep rich brown. It was like that of a 
dove and an eagle, both. Sometimes it charmed with its tran- 
quillity, then suddenly blazed with an indescribable luster. 
Sometimes it twinkled like a star with humor ; but when his 
heart was filled with sadness it became suffused with compas- 
sion. It had, moreover, the strange power of emitting sparks 
of scorn for evil. I say " sparks," for I have been sometimes 
half prompted to try to pick them up from the platform ! But 
its power to command was its greatest of all. It absolutely 
seized and chained men as it swept from floor to gallery and 
gave each one of 10,000 people the idea that it was fixed on 
him — like the eye of an oil portrait. 

His voice was also of immense value in his preaching. It 
was nearer to a tenor than a baritone in quality. I have never 
thought myself (nor heard anyone say) that it was beautiful or 
musical. I do not believe that it had any of those strange and 
fascinating qualities that the voices of some great orators like 
Webster or Spurgeon have had to soothe and lull and charm 
the ear. The tone or quality itself could not have pleased — 
apart from language, and yet it was smooth, clear, resonant, 
satisfying, and keyed to give expression to all the feelings of 
which he was capable. Its carrying power, however, was its 
most valuable characteristic. So far as I can discover, the hall 
in Manchester was the only place which he ever found great 
difficulty in filling, and this was owing more to its shape than 
size. A man who has voice enough to reach 10,000 people 
out of doors or in has voice enough for all practical purposes ! 

Upon the ear of the last man in the gallery every word 
would fall like the clang of a bell or the note of a lark. 

He possessed an instructive knowledge of most of the arts 
of oratorv, but never had an hour's training by a teacher. His 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. qq 

gestures had a great variety, but there was no attempt to make 
them specially descriptive. They were calculated to lend force 
rather than illustration to his thought. They consisted mainly 
of the hand pointed heavenward to indicate the aspiration of 
the soul, or the fist struck upon the pulpit to indicate the stern 
imperative nature of a present obligation, or the swift down- 
ward stroke to show the plainness of the truth, or the finger 
pointed straight at a hearer to arouse his conscience. 

He frequently held his Bible in his hand through much of 
the sermon, often adjusting his glasses to read in a manner 
that made every hearer feel " these are the oracles of the living 
God ! " 

His first oratorical aim was to secure the sympathy and 
attention of his audience. One of the prerequisites was pure 
air. If the ventilation was poor, he would order the windows 
open during the singing of the hymn that preceded the sermon. 
If, in spite of this, the people became drowsy, he would pound 
his Bible, raise his voice, or tell a funny story ! It was impos- 
sible for him to speak unless everybody was aroused and eager. 

His intuitive discovery of any prejudice in the minds of his 
hearers was only equaled by his ability to disarm it. He never 
began his sermon until he seemed satisfied that he had put 
everyone into a mental attitude favorable to the reception of his 
message, but when this was accomplished he settled down to 
business! From the first moment to the last the fact that he 
meant business and not fireworks, oratory, or theatricals was 
apparent. He was there to convince and persuade men, and 
for nothing else whatever. Nothing could be more impressive 
than his determination to secure the results he aimed at. The 
evidences of a supreme and terrible resolution were manifest 
in every move. 

Most of us know what it is " to stiffen the sinews and sum- 
mon up the blood " in some great emergency ; to go down into 
the arena of the soul and beat the reveille ; to call out all the 
reserves ; to conscript every energy and fling all against some 
obstacle. Mr. Moody always did this when he preached ! Of 
course he believed that he wrought his results by the aid of 
the Holy Spirit, and he did. But he wrought them by obeying 
the laws of the Spiritual world. It is through human nature 
thus exalted, thus in a state of highest activity, that this divine 
influence flows. Had he called upon the Holy Ghost without 
thus summoning up the energies of his own nature, he would 



J 



IOO 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



have been powerless. Had he thus summoned these energies 
without calling upon the Holy Ghost he could have produced 
great effect upon men ; but not Spiritual effect ! He could have 
aroused, excited, moved to tears, but not to Heaven. 

He sometimes became terrible when the current was run^ 
ning against him and he could awaken no response. The ef- 
forts, physical, mental, spiritual, which he put forth were as 
intense and terrible as those which men like Richard Coeur de 
Lion have made when set upon by multitudes of foes ! 

I have seen him when the expenditure of power scared me. 
I have felt the platform shake under the movements of his 
body — seen the sweat start from his forehead, his eyes blaze, 
his muscles grow tense and rigid, and have felt as one does 
when a great engine puffs and pants upon a slippery track, the 
steam escaping and the wheels revolving without gripping the 
track. But he always got the track at last ! He always pulled 
his load ! These mighty struggles always carried his audience. 

He was, of course, like most remarkable men, dependent 
upon certain conditions for the highest exhibitions of his 
power. Those conditions were immense audiences — im- 
mense choirs — immense excitement — everything on a colos- 
sal scale. When he looked out upon a sea of faces in every 
direction he absolutely caught fire ! In order to secure such a 
crowd he packed the people in like sardines. His eagle eye 
could detect a single vacant seat in the most distant part of the 
room. When at last there was a solid mass of human life in 
front of him so that not only elbows touched, but shoulders, 
when there was an unbroken circuit for his electricity to pass 
through, he was ready to begin to create the emotional condi- 
tions. 

His unfailing instrument was sacred song. He would 
have nothing whatever to do with a piece of music which only 
appealed to the sense of beauty. He could form no judgment 
of its value by hearing it played or sung in private. He must 
see it tried in a crowd, and could discover in an instant its 
adaption to awaken the feelings which he needed to have in 
action. If it had the right ring he used it for all it was 
worth. " Let the people sing," he would shout — " let all the 
people sing. Sing that verse again. There's an old man over 
there who is not singing at all, let him sing." No matter how 
long it took, he would keep the people at work until they were 
fused and melted. If choruses would not do it, solos would, 



LIFE OF DVVIGHT L. MOODY. IOI 

and he always had singers who possessed the requisite reper- 
toire. 

Having at last secured the true emotional condition, he rose 
to his work. The joy of conflict, of leadership, of victory, was 
in his eye, but merged in the sublime feeling that now he was 
to put forth that mighty energy to make men better; to lead 
them to the renunciation of sin ; to point them to Christ. The 
joy of warriors in battle, of old sea captains on the bridge, of 
the trainers of wild horses, of artists painting pictures, of sculp- 
tors carving statues, of statesmen swaying assemblies, were 
flaming in his soul. There was also something higher — it 
was almost the exultation of Creation. Was he not about to 
see avaricous men abandon their love of gold, defaulters re- 
store their ill-gotten gains, adulterers abandon their lust, 
drunkards dash down their cups, the captives loosed, the 
bowed down lifted up? 

Yes, he could see it, feel it all ! As the words poured in 
torrents from his lips he knew that those eternal deeds were 
being done. He pierced the mask of those faces and saw the 
operations of the souls. He beheld Christ moving among 
them. He forgot himself utterly. 

And now the audience begins to feel the strange spell of his 
rugged eloquence and marvelous simplicity. They draw into 
their hearts the great compassion. They burst into a ripple 
of laughter at a droll story ; they break down in sobs at a tale 
of love ; they stiffen with nameless awe at those terrible de- 
nunciations of sin. 

There were certain passages in some of his sermons where, 
judged by the effect they produced, it must be said he rose to a 
sublime eloquence. I heard him preach his sermon on 
" Elijah," in the city of Detroit, when it appeared to me that 
supernatural things were actually occurring in the room. The 
line of demarcation between the real and the imaginary seemed 
broken down. That solemn hush had fallen upon the audience 
which rests upon the world before a thunder storm. You would 
have thought that every listener had been nailed to his seat. 
In the final outburst we actually beheld the chariot swoop down 
from heaven, the old man ascend, the blazing car borne 
through the still air; and when the impassioned orator uttered 
that piercing cry " My father, my father, the chariot of Israel 
and the horsemen thereof ! " the excitement was almost un- 
endurable. 



102 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



I also heard him preach his sermon on " Whatsoever a Man 
Soweth, that shall He also Reap," to 2,500 men one night in 
the Chicago Avenue Church, when I am sure that an actual 
vision of a man progressing through all the stages of vice, and 
at last borne away to his doom, could not have made all the 
dreadful phenomena of evil seem more real. That was the 
sublimest exhibition of the power of one life over many that 
has ever been granted to me. 

No one who has not heard him can ever imagine what this 
power was. No quotation can give any impression of the ef- 
fects produced ; but here is a random specimen : 

" I can imagine when Christ said to the little band around 
Him, ' Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel,' Peter 
said, ' Lord, do you really mean that we are to go back to Jeru- 
salem and preach the Gospel to those men that murdered you?' 
' Yes,' said Christ, ' Go hunt up that man that spat in my face ; 
tell him he may have a seat in My kingdom yet. Yes, Peter, 
go find that man that made that cruel crown of thorns and 
placed it on My brow, and tell him I will have a crown ready 
for him when he comes into My kingdom, and there will be no 
thorns in it. Hunt up that man that took a reed and brought 
it down over the cruel thorns, driving them into my brow, and 
tell him I will put a scepter in his hand, and he shall rule over 
the nations of the earth if he will accept salvation. Search for 
the man that drove the spear into my side, and tell him there is 
a nearer way to My heart than that. Tell him I forgive 
him freely, and that he can be saved if he will accept salvation as 
a gift. Tell him there is a nearer way to My heart than that.' ' 

The most wonderful thing about this preaching was that the 
people never seemed to tire of it. Through all those wonder- 
ful years from 1871 to 1899 the crowds that thronged about him 
were as great as ever, surging around the doors and cramming 
the hall almost as soon as the doors were open, and all this 
time he was preaching the same old sermons! Some of them 
had been delivered seventy-five or one hundred times, and he 
finally ceased to care whether he had spoken them in the same 
place or not, for the people liked them the second time as well 
as the first, and the fifth as well as the second. If this is not a 
prodigy, what is ? Let those who are disposed to take this 
man lightly remember that they can move across the continent 
and no one observes their progress or cares a farthing what 
they have to say ; but whether it was in Chicago or London, 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



I03 



San Francisco or Paris, Mexico or Alexandria, Cairo or Jeru- 
salem, thousands upon thousands pursued him, until a careful 
statistician has concluded that he addressed in all not less than 
100,000,000 of human beings ! For myself I must regard it as 
I do any great natural phenomenon. He was an elemental 
force in human society. And he did not lose this power even 
to the last. The meetings which he held in Kansas City, where 
his public life closed, were in some respects the most enthusi- 
astic in his whole career, and his last sermon was delivered to 
fifteen thousand people ! 

And yet we must pause here to consider the impressive fact, 
while the crowds were as large and enthusiastic as ever, it will 
probably be discovered (or perhaps it is already acknowledged) 
that one element was lacking. The spell of the man's personal 
presence and influence was as great as formerly, but the re- 
sults in numbers actually brought to accept the ideas and the 
life he advocated, had diminished. The fact of the matter is 
that the last decade of Mr. Moody's life witnessed a great 
change in the entire situation of the religious world. New 
ideas and new conditions had arisen. With these Mr. Moody 
was not perfectly in touch. He did not fully understand them. 
This was not strange. In fact, it was inevitable. No man 
ever lived perhaps (unless it was Gladstone) who was able to 
keep pace with the rapid changes from one period to another 
during a long life. Men grow up into a certain set of condi- 
tions, adjust themselves to them, become hardened in them, 
and stay there, while a new generation arises with new needs 
and new notions, passes on, and leaves them behind. 

Mr. Moody helped to make an epoch. His influence upon 
the religious life of the generation playing its part in human 
affairs between i860 and 1890, was that of a formulative force. 
He moulded thought, action, worship. It would be too much 
to expect that his mind thus hardened in its habits of thought 
and feeling should be able to adjust itself to the enormously 
altered conditions of the last decade. In order to have done 
this he would have had to alter himself, and this was impossible 
to a nature like his. 

I said to him once, in 1897, " You are at odds with much of 
modern life. Why do you not conform to the new epoch ? 
You were a leader of a great movement a generation ago, and 
you are still young enough to head the religions life of the new 
age if you will only comprehend it and accept it." 



134 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



He fixed those great deep eyes upon me with one of those 
long stares which seemed to penetrate into my very soul, and 
shook his head ! What I said did not appeal to him. He 
knew no other methods. He could grasp no other ideas. He 
belonged to the last generation. Some other leader must arise 
for the new. Pray God he may come soon ! Pray God he 
may be as pure, as great, as competent as he who led the old. 
It is honor enough to have piloted one generation. It was all 
Moses and Joshua could do. This is certainly one of the most 
pathetic facts of human life. It is a limitation which every man 
who is growing old shudders to admit ; but it is the most in- 
evitable limitation of all. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Mr. Moody's Loyalty to the Regular Institutions of the Christian 
Church — What Might Have Happened if he had Unfurled His 
Banner — The Countless Multitudes that Would Have Flocked to 
Him — His Ability to Organize and Bring Order out of Chaos — 
How he Supported the Regular Work of the Churches — One of 
Four Men " Sent Forth by God " — His Last Meetings in Kansas 
City — Great Preparations and Enormous Crowds — His Sudden 
Illness — "Oh, I am Much Better" — Forced to Remain Away 
From a Meeting for the First Time in Forty Years — Alarming 
Symptoms — He is Sent Home in a Private Car to Northfield — 
Watching at His Bedside — Helpless, but Cheerful and Hopeful — 
"What is Going on Here?" — Nearing the End — Close of an 
Illustrious Life — Mr. Moody's Last Words — His Funeral — His 
Grave on Round Top. 

IN summing up the results of a long study of Mr. Moody's 
character, I must say that it always seemed to me to be 
one of the most remarkable things about him that he 
could never be induced to turn aside from the regular in- 
stitutions of the Christian church, into any side issue or narrow 
sect. Two influences would naturally impel him to do so. In 
the first place, his clear conceptions of the lack of fervor and 
consecration to be found in the ordinary denominations ; and, 
in the second place, a natural capacity for organization and 
opportunity to identify his name with a great and new move- 
ment. 

At almost any time during his whole career, if he had 
sounded the war cry, Mr. Moody could have rallied around his 
standard countless multitudes not only of disgruntled people, 
but of earnest and consecrated souls who saw in him the prophet 
and exponent of a higher Christian life. He always knew that 
if he should but once unfurl his banner and summon these 
people to his side he had the capacity to organize them into a 
compact and mighty association. For this power of organi- 
zation was certainly akin to genius. The instant he appeared 
amidst chaos, it became order. With a swift insight he dis- 
covered exactly what had to be done, and who were the best 

(105) 



I0 6 LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 

people to do it. With a knack and cunning that were simply 
marvelous he swept all unpromising agents into the back- 
ground, and almost before any one knew what had happened a 
living organism had sprung into being. If this man had gone 
into the ranks as a private soldier, this capacity would have 
made him a general, and if he had once come into command of 
a great military organization, it would have become a fighting 
machine of irresistible power. It was impossible to see him 
manipulating the forces which he had at command, without 
thinking of Grant or Napoleon. The indubitable proof of 
this power is, of course, to be seen in the vitality of every in- 
stitution which he established. There they stand, and in spite 
of the prognostications of critics, those who have studied them 
most intimately are persuaded that they are there to stay. 
Some one will pick them up and carry them forward. They 
have been endowed with an indestructible vitality. The 
church he founded in Chicago bears as fresh an imprint of his 
hand to-day, as when he was its pastor a generation ago. 

With such self-knowledge as he possessed he must have 
clearly seen that if he had struck out, like Wesley or Booth, to 
form a new society he could have given it colossal proportions 
and have secured for himself an undying fame through the 
society which should subsist to perpetuate his memory and 
his ideals. But he deliberately turned away from this great 
temptation. He scorned to further divide the already sundered 
body of the Christian church. He decided that instead of 
communicating the mighty impulses of his life to a separate 
organization he would instill them as best he could into the 
church universal and be forgotten if need be. This we regard 
as the very noblest decision of his mind and the noblest impulse 
of his heart. 

His desire to support the regular work of the churches was 
evidenced two or three years ago, when he literally crushed the 
proposed Northfield Emergency Fund, designed to send out 
student volunteers as foreign missionaries, when the regular 
denominational boards could not send them for lack of. funds. 
People who have known him for many years and heard him 
speak frequently said that they had never heard him throw 
more earnestness into an address than when he said: 

" Some of the people have been sending me checks for 
this fund. I want you to call them back, or I shall send them on 
to the missionary Boards. I am in sympathy with the Boards 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



I07 



and have no sympathy with the croakers. You cannot find a 
better set of men on this continent than those in the American 
Board. Yon cannot find a better set of men than those in the 
Presbyterian Board. Where can you find a better man than 
Robert Speer? Where will you find a man that is doing better 
work than Bishop Thoburn in India? Any man that is work- 
ing as he is in India we will help. Dr. Clough is also doing a 
magnificent work there. We are in hearty sympathy with 
these regular Boards. I think it is a great mistake to send 
any money outside of the regular channels." 

It is clear that Mr. Moody affords the deepest problems for 
the psychologist and the philosopher. He is no longer the 
" Evangelist Moody " alone ; but also the founder of institu- 
tions and movements which have shaped the habits of a gen- 
eration, and bid fair to continue their influences indefinitely 
into the future. This fact is not known to the masses, and one 
of the difficulties to be encountered by his biographers will be 
that of persuading men to believe that he was ever anything 
more than a strolling preacher ! Sooner or later, however, it 
will be conceded by all impartial judges that he must be a great 
man who could spring from the humblest surroundings and 
yet by his own genius attain a world-wide reputation ; who had 
only a district school education and yet saw the most polished 
scholars of the age sitting humbly at his feet ; who never de- 
spised the material element of existence and was, notwithstand- 
ing, one of the most spiritual men who ever lived ; who walked 
through a long life on the sharp edges of great dangers and yet 
never fell ; who was endowed with powers of the highest order 
but never used them for his personal aggrandizement ; who was 
the object of most extravagant adulation and yet retained the 
modesty of a child ; who passed the whole of his later life 
among the rich and learned and yet never lost his sympathy 
with the poor, the ignorant, and the suffering. 

No wonder that in speaking of Dwight L. Moody, Dr. N. 
D. Hillis said in part: 

" When long time hath passed, some historian, recalling 
the great epochs and religious teachers of our century, will 
say: ' There were four men sent forth by God — their names, 
Charles Spurgeon, Phillips Brooks, Henry Ward Beecher, 
and Dwight L. Moody.' Each was a herald of good tidings; 
each was a prophet of a new social and religious order, and each 
made a permanent contribution to the Christian church; while 



108 LIFE OF D WIGHT L. MOODY. 

of all it may be said their sermons were translated into many 
tongues and their names known in every town and city where 
the English language is spoken. For our instruction, rebuke, 
and inspiration God hath raised up other preachers, represents 
ing a high order of intellect, marked eloquence, and perma- 
nent influence; but as to the first order of greatness there have 
been perhaps these four — no more. God girded each of these 
prophets for his task and taught him how to " dip his sword 
in Heaven." 

" In characterizing the message of these men we say that 
Spurgeon was expositional, Phillips Brooks devotional, Henry 
Ward Beecher prophetic and philosophical, while Dwight L. 
Moody was a herald rather than teacher, addressing himself to 
the common people — the unchurched multitudes. The sym- 
bol of the great English preacher is a lighted lamp, the symbol 
of Brooks a flaming heart, the symbol of Beecher an orchestra 
of many instruments, while Mr. Moody was a trumpet of nar- 
row range perhaps, but sounding the advance sometimes 
through inspiration and sometimes through alarm. 

" And our sorrow to-day is the more in that the last of these 
giants has gone down to the valley and disappeared behind the 
thick shadows. Oft in hours of gloom and doubt, full oft in 
days when wickedness seemed enthroned in high places, when 
the rich seemed to be selfish in their strength, and the poor 
without an advocate in high places, when good men seemed 
weakness and leaders seemed a lie, in our depression we have 
turned our thoughts toward the three prophets in the English 
Tabernacle, in Trinity, and in Plymouth, or toward the evange- 
list and friend of the common people, and have been com- 
forted by the mere thought that things were a little safer be- 
cause these four men were in their appointed places. The 
first three were commanders, each over his regiment, and 
worked from a fixed center; but the evangelist was the leader 
of a flying band, who went every whither into the enemy's 
country, seeking conquests of peace and righteousness. Be 
the reasons what they may, the common people gladly heard 
the great evangelist. In his death the unchurched classes 
have lost their best friend. For nearly forty years the mul- 
titudes have pressed and thronged into the great halls and 
churches to hear this herald speak of duty, sin, salvation, and 
God's love in His great Christ. But, disappearing from our 
sight, he is not dead. While life continues for multitudes he 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY 



IO9 



will remain a cool spring- flowing in a desert, the covert of a 
rock in time of sorrow." 

It is now time for us to bring this story of an illustrious life 
to its close. On the 16th of November, 1899, Mr. Moody 
opened a series of meetings in Kansas City. Great prepara- 
tions had been made. He was at his best. The crowds were 
enormous. There was not a premonition of what was to 
occur. But one night at the close of a meeting he experienced 
an unusual fatigue. A doctor was summoned and decided that 
the great heart which had performed such prodigies through all 
these years was working very badly and demanded immediate 
rest. This declaration he heard with his usual incredulity, say- 
ing to those who inquired about it — " Oh, I am much better. 
Don't know just what is the matter. A little touch of malaria 
or grip, perhaps. But the doctors are bringing me around 
all right." 

But on the 18th he was forced to remain away from the 
noon meeting. " I regret it very much," he said, " for it is 
the first time in my life I was ever compelled to do such a 
thing." The symptoms became rapidly more alarming, and 
almost immediately arrangements were made to send him in 
a private car to his home in Northfield. There he lay for 
several weeks almost helpless, but cheerful and hopeful — 
ministered to by as loyal and as loving a circle of friends 
as ever surrounded the couch of an invalid. In fact, it may 
be said, that the civilized world watched at that bedside, for 
the bulletins of his condition were telegraphed wherever 
men knew of the gospel of Jesus Christ. For a long time 
the hope of recovery was cherished ; but early in the morning 
of December 22d it became clear that he could not survive 
the strain. He soon made the discovery for himself. " What 
is the matter? What is going on here? " he exclaimed as he 
awakened out of a slumber and saw evidence of unusual feel- 
ing. One of the children replied, " Father, you have not 
been quite so well, and we came in to see you." He well 
knew what these kind words really meant and began to make 
his preparations for the last great change by summoning his 
family and addressing to them his parting words. During 
a portion of the time he could talk freely, and said to his sons : 
" I have always been an ambitious man, not ambitious to lay 
up wealth, but to leave you work to do, and you are going to 
continue the work in the schools at East Northfield and Mount 



I IO LIFE OF DWIGHT L MOODY. 

Hermon and Chicago." Still later on, the stillness of the 
room was broken by the sobs of his daughter, who exclaimed, 
" Father, we cannot spare you! " 

" I am not going to throw my life away. If God has more 
work for me to do, I'll not die," he said bravely. 

Just as the shadows were closing in upon him December 
23d, he opened his eyes and exclaimed, " Earth recedes and 
Heaven opens before me. If this is death, there is nothing 
awful here. It is sweet. This is bliss. Do not call me back. 
God is calling me. I must go. There is no valley here. It 
is all beautiful." A few moments later, the great soul passed 
to its reward. 

It was only a few weeks before that that he had closed a 
sermon to the students with these impressive and prophetic 
words: 

" By and by you will hear people say, ' Mr. Moody is dead.' 
Don't you believe a word of it. At that very moment I shall 
be more alive than I am now. I shall then truly begin to live. 
I was born of the flesh in 1837. I was born of the spirit in 
1856. That which is born of the flesh may die. That which 
is born of the spirit will live forever." 

The world will not soon forget that scene, those words, that 
triumph ! 

The funeral occurred on the 26th of December, 1899. 

The sun rose clear over the mountain, at whose feet North- 
field nestles. In the distance, on the foothills of the Green 
Mountains, patches of snow appeared. The morning was 
frosty, but in the afternoon, as the friends gathered for the 
service, the temperature had risen several degrees. Early in 
the forenoon special trains arrived, and large parties on regular 
trains came later. Several of the older friends came the day 
before, and were entertained at The Northfield, which was 
opened for the occasion. 

At 10 o'clock there was a brief service at the house, con- 
ducted by Dr. C. I. Scofield, the pastor of the Congregational 
Church, who was present during those " four glorious hours " 
as the Friday morning has been called by one who saw the 
great evangelist fall asleep, and Dr. R. A. Torrey, the pastor 
of the Chicago Avenue Church, and the superintendent of the 
Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Dr. Scofield read the 
ninetieth Psalm and the fourth chapter of 1st Thessalonians, 
and Dr. Torrey offered prayer. No signs of mourning ap- 



LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 



II I 



peared about the house; no crape was seen on the door. The 
window blinds were all open. People entered the house as if 
going to a reception. Inside, after the service, they sat in the 
library and parlor chatting pleasantly. Their conversation 
was mainly about Mr. Moody, recalling incidents in his event- 
ful career, helpful words which he had spoken and deeds of 
kindness which he had done. 

Shortly before n o'clock the body upon which others had 
leaned for a generation was taken from the room upstairs in 
which it had rested after being embalmed, and placed in the 
cloth-covered coffin with quiet trimmings and a plate bearing 
simply the name and dates of his birth and death: 

2Dtoxsl)t %. ^ootip 

183 7- 1899. 

The coffin was placed upon a cloth-covered frame and car- 
ried to the church, a half-mile distant, by thirty-two students of 
the Mount Hermon School, headed by the officiating clergy- 
men and followed by Ira D. Sankey, Mr. Moody's associate for 
nearly thirty years, trustees of the Northfield School, and 
other intimate friends. Christmas greens festooned the gal- 
leries of the church, while on the coffin and about it were ap- 
propriate floral tributes from the trustees, faculties, and 
students of the several institutions here and in Chicago. At 
the head was a pillow, in which a crown had been worked in 
white, with a purple ribbon, on which Mr. Moody's last words 
were seen. " God is calling me." 

An open Bible, with " Victory, I Corinthians xv. 55-57 " 
on the left side, and " II Timothy iv. 7-8 " on the other, rested 
at the foot. Palms, ferns, laurel, violets, cut flowers, and 
callas were placed about the pulpit. 

Dr. Scofield had charge of the services, which began with 
the hymn, " A Little While." He then offered an invocation, 
Dr. Arthur T. Pierson read the Scripture lesson, and Dr. 
George C. Needham prayed. " Immanuel's Land " was the 
second hymn. 

After the public services the coffin was carried again by 
the Mount Hermon students to Round Top, the Olivet of 
Northfield, and placed in a vault just at the crown of the little 
hill, where many of the best meetings are held every year. Mr. 



II2 LIFE OF DWIGHT L. MOODY. 

Moody thought that the Lord might return while he was living, 
and he had been heard to say that there was no place on earth 
that he would prefer to be when that eventful hour dawned 
than on Round Top. His remark was recalled after he en- 
tered " within the gates," and no other place of burial was even 
mentioned. 

From this resting-place one may see his birthplace, a little 
more than a stone's throw to the south; his own home for the 
last quarter of a century, about as far to the west; the seminary 
buildings, some of them a minute's walk to the north; the last 
two buildings erected at Mount Hermon, the chapel and Over- 
ton Hall, four miles distant, appear across the beautiful Con- 
necticut River Valley. A prayer, a hymn, and the benediction 
composed the simple service at the grave — a grave which we 
believe will be one of the great shrines of history, one that for 
centuries will be visited by pilgrims from all over the world; 
for he was one of the few men of modern times whose fame and 
influence was conterminous with civilization. 

There are many of us to whom it seems as if a big mountain 
had dropped out of sight or a great river ceased flowing. It 
will never be the same world to us any more. 

We remember the words of Beecher over the coffin of 
Lincoln: " Dead, dead, dead, he yet speaketh. Is Washing- 
ton dead? Is Hampden dead? Is David dead? Disin- 
thralled of flesh and risen to the unobstructed sphere where 
passion never comes, he begins his illimitable work. His life 
now is grafted upon the infinite, and will be fruitful as no 
earthly life can be. Pass on thou that hast overcome. Your 
sorrows, O people, are his peace. Your bells and bands and 
muffled drums sound triumph in his ear. Wail and weep here ; 
God made it echo and triumph there. Pass on ! " 





CHAPTER I. 



SIMPLY BELIEVING, SIMPLY RECEIVING. 



An Incident in Manchester, England. — " Oh, I See It Now " — • 
" I Understand You Have Been Stealing " — Calling Things 
by Their Right Names — Two Men Who Saw What they 
were Looking For — Story of a Remarkable Conversion — 
Forging His Own Chains — On the Deck of a Sinking Ship — 
"Jump Into the Lifeboat!" — The Man with Handbills — The 
Story of Little Nellie — " Help ! Help ! " — A Wicked Yorkshire 
Miner — "Don't Cry, Lass; Don't Cry'-' — The Silver Key and 
Tress of Auburn Hair — A Bed of Straw — "No One Cares for 
Me ' — From a Dark Garret to the Kingdom of God. 

T one of our Sunday meet- 
ings in Manchester, Eng- 
land, a good many years 
ago, a great many re- 
mained after the meeting, 
and we didn't have workers 
enough. So I went up into 
the gallery and talked with 
inquirers. While I was 
talking a gentleman came 
and sat a little apart from 
the rest. I thought at first 
he was a skeptic, but when 
I saw tears in his eyes I knew that he was interested, and I 
went up to him and said: " My friend, are you a Christian? " 
8 (113) 




DWIGHT L. MOODY, AT 62. 



U4 



A HAPPY ILLUSTRATION. 



" No," he answered, " but I should like to be one." 

" Very well," I replied, " I will talk with you if you wish.'* 

I read a passage of Scripture to him and said : 

" Does that make it plain? " 

" No, that doesn't help me at all." 

Then I read another passage, and I felt sure I should see 
a new light in his eyes ; and I said : 

" Does that help you? " 

" No, that doesn't help my case at all. The fact is, I can't 
feel that I am saved." 

" Oh," I said, " I get at your difficulty now. I want to ask 
you a question : Was it Noah's feelings that saved him, or 
was it the ark? " 

" Oh," he answered, " I see it now ; good night, Mr. 
Moody." 

I heard him go down stairs, and I said to myself, " That is 
a little too quick for me." 

At the next meeting I looked for him, but didn't see him. 
I had been looking for him about a week, when one Sunday 
someone touched me on the shoulder and said : 

" Do you remember me, Mr. Moody? Don't you remem- 
ber the man and the ark the other night? " 

" Yes, are you the ' ark man ' ? " 

" Yes." 

" Well, I have been looking- for you ever since ; how is it 
with you ? " 

" Oh," he said, " the ark settled it. Why, I had been try- 
ing to save myself by my feelings ; to make an ' ark ' of my 
feelings, and when you spoke of the ark saving Noah I saw it 
at once. Any one can see that ; it settled all my troubles, all 
my difficulties." 

When I left Manchester some time after he was almost the 
last man to shake my hand ; he gave me a good grip and said, 
" Everywhere you go tell people about the ark ; any stupid man 
can see that." Some one has said that a fly was just as safe 
in the ark as an elephant; it is the ark that makes the weak 



HOW HE BECAME A SOLDIER. l l 5 

ones safe. If you are in the ark that saves you ; it isn't your 
feelings, it isn't your righteousness, it is the ark; and, thank 
God, we haven't got to toil as Noah did to build the ark, it is 
already built. 

I once heard of a minister who said I was preaching per- 
nicious doctrine when I preached sudden conversion. But 
point out to me one single conversion in the Bible that was 
not sudden. Every conversion recorded there was instan- 
taneous. If preachers say conversion is a life work they are 
keeping men out of the kingdom of God. We can have in- 
stantaneous conversion. 

When I was in England they did not agree with me at all 
on this point. They said conversion was a life work from the 
cradle to the grave. I said all I could to convince them of the 
contrary. One day I was walking down the streets of York 
when I saw an English soldier coming towards me. When 
he came up I said : 

" Would you allow a stranger to ask you a question? " 

" Certainly, sir." 

" How long did it take you to become a soldier? " 

" Well, in the first place I made up my mind to enlist." 

" Well," I said, " that's a pretty good point." 

" After I made up my mind to enlist I went to the recruit- 
ing officer and told him I wanted to enlist. He took out a 
shilling and put it in my hand, and the moment that it touched 
my hand I was a soldier." 

" Were you a soldier before you put on the uniform? " 

" Yes, sir." 

" And before you knew anything about military disci- 
pline?" 

"Oh, yes, I was a soldier the moment that shilling touched 
my hand." 

Here was a man who was a civilian one moment and a 
soldier the next ; he could go where he pleased one moment, 
but the next moment he had to go where Queen Victoria sent 
him, or be arrested as a deserter. 



1 16 REFORMING BY DEGREES. 

A minister once preached a very powerful sermon against 
the doctrine that I was going to preach about, and he told his 
people they ought not to go and hear me. The pernicious doc- 
trines I taught were sudden conversion, and assurance. I 
once heard a lady say she didn't like our meetings because I 
taught that people could be converted all at once if they would 
look to God. I thought I would like to get hold of some of 
those modern philosophers, and so I told them of a man who 
came to me and said he was in trouble. For some time he 
would not tell me what his trouble was, but finally he said that 
he had overdrawn his accounts, — the polite way of saying 
that he had been stealing. I said : 

" Oh, I understand, you have been stealing? " 

" Well, I suppose you might call it that." 

" Let us call it by the right name. How much have you 
taken?" 

" I don't know ; I haven't kept account." 

" Have you stolen a thousand dollars ? " 

" I think it would be more than that." . 

" Fifteen hundred ? " 

" Yes, I suppose it would amount to that." 

" I will tell you the only way that thing can be settled ; go 
and make restitution at once, that is all you have to do." 

Now I suppose if I am to believe one of these modern 
philosophers who don't believe in sudden conversions I ought 
to have said to that man, " You stole fifteen hundred dollars 
this year, but don't steal more than a thousand next year, and 
then don't steal more than five hundred the next. If your em- 
ployer catches you at it tell him that you have been converted, 
that it is a gradual thing, and that you expect in the course 
of a few years you won't steal any." See how it works? 

Take a man who is in the habit of getting drunk, and every 
time he gets drunk it wakes up the devil in him, and he knocks 
his wife down. After he gets over his drunk he comes back- 
to the meeting and wants to become a Christian. Now send 
one of these modern philosophers to him, and he says : 



SOME GREAT REVIVALS. 



7 



" What is the trouble? Are you a hard drinker? " 

" Yes, sir." 

" Get drunk every week? " 

" Yes, I am ashamed to say I do." 

" And when you are drunk you go home and knock your 
wife down ? " 

" Yes, generally." 

" Well, I don't believe in sudden conversions ; I believe in 
being converted gradually. Now, don't you get drunk more 
than once a month next year. Wouldn't it be encouraging if 
your wife didn't get knocked down more than once a month 
next year? Then perhaps the year after that you won't get 
drunk more than once in three months, and the year after that 
not more than once a year. In a few years you won't get drunk 
at all, and then you will be converted, and yours will be a happy 
family." 

Don't you think . that is absurd ? Conversion is right- 
about face. A man can't repent quick enough. How long 
did it take a man to be converted when Jesus Christ was on 
earth? When He said to the man who was sick with the 
palsy, " Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee," were 
they forgiven ? They must have been forgiven in one minute 
when Christ was on earth ; and after He was glorified they were 
converted a little faster — three thousand in one day, and Jews 
at that ! And not only converted and baptized, but brought 
into the church of God in one day ! Three thousand one day, 
and five thousand another day ; that is what the Bible tells us. 

Another favorite saying of these modern philosophers is : 
" I don't believe in revivals. I know men who were converted 
in a revival a few years ago who didn't hold out." It is a good 
thing to study the Bible and see what it says about revivals. A 
good many who were converted in Christ's day went back and 
walked no more with Him. Do all the blossoms on your trees 
bring forth fruit ? If they did the fruit would break down the 
trees. Do you say that a mother ought not to rejoice when a 
babe is born because she isn't sure it is going to live? And 



n g FINDING WHAT WE LOOK FOR. 

do you say that we ought not to rejoice when anybody is 
converted because we don't know they are going to hold out ? 
There is not a denomination in Christendom to-day that has 
not sprung out of a revival. The Roman Catholic Church 
claims to be apostolic ; was it not born of the fires of Pentecost? 
Here are our Episcopal friends ; they say they are apostolic ; if 
that is so they came from Pentecost, too. Certainly, they 
ought not to be afraid of revivals. I have met Lutherans who 
were very much afraid of revivals ; where did they come from 
if not from the great revival under Luther? I would like to 
know where Wesleyan Methodists came from? Was it not 
from revivals under Wesley and Whitefield? I should like 
to know if there is a Young Men's Christian Association or any 
religious society worth having, that hasn't sprung out of re- 
vivals. If you ministers are afraid converts won't hold out, 
I will tell you how to make them a good deal stronger ; just let 
one hundred of these converts come into your church, then 
preach sermon after sermon to them and follow them up 
individually. 

I heard a story in London a few years ago that illustrates 
the thought that men generally look for what they want to see, 
and they usually see what they are looking for. At a dinner 
in that city a merchant who had recently returned from India, 
and a missionary who had also returned from there, were 
seated near each other. Some one asked the merchant what 
he thought of the missionary work of Englishmen in India, and 
whether the native converts remained faithful to their new faith. 

" Native converts ! " exclaimed the merchant in surprise, 
" I have been in India twenty years and I never saw a native 
convert." 

Every one looked at the old missionary, expecting to hear a 
vigorous defense of missionary societies, but he made no com- 
ment. In a little while he said to the merchant : 

" I understand you were quite a hunter in India, and that 
you had wonderful success in hunting tigers." Immediately 
the merchant straightened up. 



THE CONVERTED THIEF. jjq 

" Yes," he said, " I have killed a great many tigers in India." 
And then he proceeded to relate tiger experiences. When 
there was a lull in the conversation the missionary said quietly : 

" Isn't it strange? I have been in India twenty years and I 
never saw a tiger there ! " 

The moral is simple : One man had been looking for con- 
verts, and he found them ; the other man was hunting for tigers 
and he saw them. 

We are told by both Matthew and Mark that the two thieves 
who died on either side of Christ reviled Him and scoffed at 
Him, as did the crowd. They cast His title in His teeth. We 
are told there was no difference between those men. Both had 
been in rebellion against God all their lives. Both were led 
to execution as thieves and malefactors, on the same day ; but 
one of them was converted during the day, and the other was 
not. Over one of them came a wonderful change. What 
was it? How was it? What brought him under conviction? 
I don't know ; but one thing I do know — he was convicted of 
sin and confessed, and Christ saved him and snatched him from 
the very borders of hell. How simple the conversions of the 
Bible are ! Simply believing, simply receiving. 

Years ago when I went to St. Louis to hold a series of meet- 
ings one of the newspapers announced that it would publish 
every word I uttered in the meetings during the week. Ser- 
mons, prayers, notices, and every thing appeared verbatim. 
Every word I said was taken down by two stenographers. If 
one left out a word the other put it in. Everything went in, 
blunders and all. And then the headlines were the most sen- 
sational possible. One night I preached on the text " What 
must I do to be saved ? " and the next morning the paper ap- 
peared with a full report of the sermon, with this headline : 

" HOW THE JAILER OF PHILIPPI WAS CAUGHT." 

The thing went on through the week, and then the paper 

announced that it would keep up the verbatim reports as long 

as I remained in St. Louis. It was the severest strain that I 



120 AN INTERESTED PRISONER. 

ever was under. It was like having a Turkish bath all the 
week. But knowing that everything I said was going to be 
printed, I worked in more Scripture in those sermons than I 
ever had done before. It was a good chance to get the Bible 
into the homes of the people. 

A copy of the paper about the Philippian jailer was lying 
on the floor of a St. Louis prison, and one of the most hardened 
criminals saw the headline, " How the Jailer of Philippi was 
Caught." Said he : 

" That's good ; I am glad to know that one jailer has got 
his deserts." 

He thought Philippi was a town in Illinois across the river, 
and he began to read the story to find out what the jailer had 
been doing and how he happened to be arrested. In a mo- 
ment his eye fell on the text, " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ 
and thou shalt be saved." He couldn't imagine what that had 
to do with the arrest of a jailer, but as he read the sermon he was 
convicted of sin and cried to God for mercy. In the morning 
a change in the man was noticed by the under-sheriffs, but the 
sheriff of the prison said : 

" Burke is trying to play the pious dodge in order to get a 
light sentence." 

After the trial, owing to some technicality, Burke was re- 
leased from prison, and he tried to get honest work. He came 
to New York for that purpose, but finding it impossible to get 
work he returned to St. Louis. 

Six months after his conversion the sheriff sent for Burke, 
and he supposed that some old charge had been trumped up 
against him, for he had been honest for the last six months. 
To his great surprise the sheriff told him that he had been 
shadowed every day since he left prison. He knew of his 
journey to New York and of his straightforward life, and now 
he wanted to appoint him deputy sheriff. In a little while he 
became treasurer of the sheriff's office. During all that time 
I had never seen him ; but sometime after, when I was preach- 
ing in Chicago, he got leave of absence for a week to see the 



A CHARACTER REDEEMED. 



121 



man whose sermon had been reported in the daily paper and 
had been the means of bringing him to Christ. When I went 
to St. Louis a few years ago, on my way to Mexico, a man 
showed me two photographs — one of Burke when he was in 
prison, taken from the rogue's gallery, and the other taken a 
few days before I was there. The Lord had changed the ap- 
pearance of the man's face so that I should never have known 
that the photographs were of the same person. 

In Texas I told about the great change that had been 
wrought in this man, and a minister who was present rose to 
say that he had been invited to hold a ten days' mission in St. 
Louis,, and finding that he was unable to remain the last few 
days, he made inquiries for some one to take charge of the 
meetings. Every one said : 

" Send for Valentine Burke." 

He sent to the sheriff to see if Burke could be excused for 
a few days, but the sheriff said that just then Burke was in 
charge of a store containing a large and valuable stock of 
diamonds, and he had no one else to whom he could intrust 
this very important matter. Burke won his way into the con- 
fidence of every sheriff from 1880 until his death in 1895. 
When he died the city was profoundly moved. Thank God for 
the daily press which led to the conversion of this man, who, 
I have been told by a friend in St. Louis, was one of the 
brightest stars won for the Redeemer by that series of meetings. 

Many don't know what freedom is. They are still asleep 
and sunk in bondage. They are like Lazarus, who came forth 
from the grave with his grave-clothes on, bound hand and foot. 
The difficulty with these people is that they are always looking 
in their own hearts to find freedom, whereas it is the truth 
which makes us free, the word of God. A lady was telling 
about going down South a few years after the Civil War. She 
went to a hotel, and the room she was shown to was not very 
neat. She said to the old colored woman who attended her, 
" T should like to have you put the room in order ; I am from 
the North, and you know the Northern people set you free." 



I2 2 FORGING HIS FETTERS. 

The lady went away and came back in a little while, and it 
seemed as if half a day's work had been done in her absence. 

" Now," said the colored woman, " is I free or isn't I ? My 
ole massa tells me I isn't free, and I go out among de colored- 
folks and dey say I is free." 

A great many of God's people are in the same condition ; 
they do not know whether they are free or not. It is not a 
matter of feeling. The proclamation of Abraham Lincoln set 
that woman free, and so it is the proclamation of God's word 
that makes us free ; not that we feel this way or that way. 

A parable was told by Mr. Spurgeon of a tyrant who ordered 
one of his subjects, a blacksmith, into his presence, and said 
to him : " Make a chain of a certain length, and bring it to 
me on a certain day." The blacksmith returned at the ap- 
pointed time, bringing the chain. The tyrant said : " Make it 
twice as long and bring it to me." The blacksmith made it, 
and brought it to him. The tyrant looked at it and said again : 
" Make it twice the length, and bring it to me." The black- 
smith obeyed, and after he had made the chain twice its former 
length, he brought it back. The tyrant then said to his officers : 
" Take the chain and bind that man hand and foot with it." 
That is what the devil is doing with many. He is making 
them forge their own chain. What you want is to become free. 

When men are really converted they turn right-about face. 
People say, " I don't believe you can be saved so easily ; I be- 
lieve we have got to work a little for salvation. I believe in 
faith and works." So do I, but I don't believe a man is going 
to work out his own salvation. Suppose, for a moment, that 
this platform is the deck of a sinking ship. The vessel has 
sprung a leak and is going to the bottom. The captain shouts : 

" Jump into the lifeboat! The vessel's going down! " 

But I think I can keep the vessel afloat by pumping, and 
so I keep on pumping ; and I finally say to the captain : 

" I don't believe the vessel's going down." 

Now, that would be trying to work out my own salvation ; 
and all the time the vessel would be sinking. But Mr. Sankey 



THE SMILING CHRISTIAN. l2 $ 

won't stay on the doomed vessel. He just leaps into the life- 
boat, takes an oar, and pulls with a will for the shore. That's 
working out your own salvation after you're saved. 

There were two brothers in London, one of whom was 
quickened and the other converted at our meetings. They had 
a brother in the south of Ireland who was not a Christian, and 
they telegraphed him, " Come at once, very important busi- 
ness." When he arrived in London they took him into their 
private office and told him what the Lord had done for them. 
They brought him into our meeting that evening and into the 
inquiry-room and he was led to Christ. That dispatch was 
truthful : it was " very important business." If you have a 
brother out of the fold go and fetch him in. Do as Andrew 
did when he found his brother Peter, and as Philip did when he 
found his friend Nathaniel under the fig tree, and bring him 
to Christ. 

There was a man converted in Chicago who couldn't speak 
a word of English, and we had to make use of an interpreter. 
What to do with that man after he became a Christian I didn't 
know. He wanted to do something for the Lord, and, finally, 
I stationed him at a street corner to give out handbills. When 
the Lord converted him he was so happy ! His face was all 
aglow, and to every man that went by — and there were some 
pretty hard cases — he just gave a handbill. Some thanked 
him and some swore at him, but he kept on smiling all the time. 
He couldn't tell the difference between thanks and curses. He 
stood there every day for two months, without a hat part of 
the time, and every night he was there ; when the short days 
came and it grew dark early he had a transparency lighted up 
on the corner ; and he was instrumental in saving a good many 
souls. 

The best thing we can do for children is to bring them early 
to Christ. Early impressions never, never leave them, and I 
do not know why they should not grow up in the service of the 
Lord. I contend that those who arc converted early make the 
best Christians. Take the man who is converted at fiftv. Tie 



2 4 



A LITTLE CHILD'S PRAYER. 



has continually to fight against his old habits ; but a young 
person has a Christian character to form and a long life to give 
to Christ. 

I was once urging the early conversion of children, and an 
old man arose at the close of the meeting and said, " I want to 
endorse every word." Sixteen years before, he was a mission- 
ary in a heathen country, and his wife died and left three little 
children. On the Sunday after her death the eldest girl came 
to him and said, " Papa, shall I take the children into the bed- 
room and pray with them as mother used to? " She was only 
ten years old, but she wanted to follow in her mother's foot- 
steps. The father said yes, and she led them into the chamber 
to pray. When they came out he noticed they had been weep- 
ing, and he asked them why. 

" Well, father," said the little girl, " I prayed just as mother 
taught me, and then little brother said the prayer that mother 
taught him ; but Susie was so young that mother had not 
taught her a prayer, so she made a prayer of her own, and I 
could not help but cry when I heard it." 

" What did she say? " said the father. 

" Why, she put up her little hands and closed her eyes, and 
said, ' O God, you have come and taken away my dear mamma, 
and I have no mamma to pray for me now — won't you please 
make me good just as my dear mamma was, for Jesus' sake, 
Amen.' " 

God heard that prayer. That little child, before she was 
four years old, gave evidence of being a child of God, and for 
sixteen years she remained in that heathen country leading 
little children to Christ. 

Many years ago an infidel lived near my Mission School in 
Chicago. He was very angry because I had started the school 
near his house. An old proverb says, " Like Priest, like 
People," and you can say, " Like Parent, like Child." His 
children knew their father didn't like me, and when I went by 
the house they called me " hypocrite " and pretty much every- 
thing else that was bad. I worked months and months to get 



THE ENTERING WEDGE. 



125 






those children into my Sunday-school, but met nothing but 
curses from children and parents. One night we were having 
a boys' meeting, and I noticed that one of his little boys, about 
thirteen years old, had come in. At first I thought God had 
sent him, but afterwards I thought perhaps Satan had, for he 
was sticking pins into the other boys, and doing everything he 
could to break up the meeting. I kept quiet, and when I went 
out I said : 

" Allie, I am glad you came to-night. I hope you will come 
again." 

He felt ashamed when I spoke so kindly to him, after he 
had behaved so badly, but he promised to come again, and he 
came night after night. One night he arose in the meeting 
and said : 

" Boys, you know all about my home, and you know all 
about me. I wish you would pray God to convert me. I 
would like to become a Christian." 

I said to myself, " That is the entering wedge into that in- 
fidel home." 

One day about five weeks after, I noticed that he was cry- 
ing. I thought perhaps something had gone wrong with him 
during the day, but he got up, weeping, and said : 

" Boys, I wish you would pray for my mother." 

" Thank God for that," I said. 

After prayer I took him aside and said : 

" Allie, have you ever told your mother what God has done 
for you? " 

" No," he said, " but I have tried to show it in my life. I 
have been obedient and kind, and done everything I could 
to please her." 

" That is splendid," I said, " but perhaps the time has come 
for you to confess Christ. And now, when you go home, won't 
you ask your mother to let you pray with her." He said he 
couldn't. 

" You had better tell your mother what the Lord has done 
for you," I said. 



126 A MOTHER LED TO CHRIST. 

The next morning he came to my place of business and said 
his mother wanted to see me at her house. I said : 

" I will go up this afternoon." 

He said she would like to see me right away. So I went. 
When I arrived at the house the mother wanted everyone to 
go out of the room but Allie, herself, and me ; and when we 
were alone, she said : 

" Mr. Moody, I sent for you to tell me what to do to be 
saved." 

" Well, what has brought about this change? " 

" Well," she said, " how can I help believing in religion 
when I have seen such a change in Allie? Last night he 
nearly broke my heart. He came to me from the meeting and 
hung around as if he wanted to tell me something, but he said 
nothing. At last I said, ' Allie, you had better go to bed.' 
He still lingered, and finally I commanded him to go. He has 
been a very obedient child lately. He started, and went up 
one or two steps, and then suddenly came back and buried 
his head in my bosom and began to cry. I said, ' Are you 
sick, Allie?' 'No, mother.' 'What is the trouble? Has 
any one hurt your feelings ? ' ' Mother, I have been trying to 
be a Christian for the past five weeks, and the boys at school 
laugh at me, and brother Charlie laughs at me when I pray, 
and I have nobody to help me. I wish you were a Christian, 
for if you were you would help me.' Then he went to his bed- 
room. I thought I would go to his room and see if he felt as 
badly as he pretended to. I heard him praying: 'Save my 
mother to-night. Have mercy on my mother.' I could not 
sleep. All through the night I could hear my little boy's voice 
pleading for me. I never spent such a wretched night in my 
life. If you will show me how to become a Christian, I will 
become one. I don't want to keep my boy back." 

She became a Christian. She came to my school, took a 
class, and within a few weeks every member of that infidel 
family, but one, were Christians. 

Two millers used to keep their mill running day and night ; 



CHRIST KNOCKING AT THE DOOR. 



127 



and every night one came down the stream in his boat to within 
a short distance of the dam, where he would leave the boat and 
walk to the mill, while his brother would go back in the same 
way. One night when coming down the stream one of them 
fell asleep, and did not wake up until within a short distance of 
the dam. He knew that if he went over the dam it meant cer- 
tain death. He managed in the darkness to get the boat near 
the shore, where he got hold of a small twig, but the moment 
he pulled on it it began to give way at the roots. He ceased 
pulling at it and simply held on, all the while crying out, 
" Help ! Help ! " At length some one heard his cry, and came 
near with a rope, which was thrown to him and by which he 
was saved from death. Now the rope let down into this un- 
believing world is just that little word " believe," and it is 
offered to every soul, and all you have to do is to just lay hold 
of it. Give up trying to pull yourself out, and lay hold of the 
rope by which another will pull you out. 

Conversion is through an unseen power — a supernatural 
agency. It is the Son of God who knocks at your heart and 
says, " Behold, I stand at the door, and knock : if any man 
hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and 
will sup with him, and he with Me." A friend of mine once 
said that when Christ first came to him He knocked pretty 
loud. The second time conscience was not so keen, and the 
knocking did not seem so loud. When He came a third time 
the knock seemed fainter, and the fourth time fainter still, and 
the fifth time almost inaudible, till by and by the knocking 
could not be heard at all. My friends, Christ stands knocking 
now. 

At one of our meetings in London a man arose and said 
he had been carrying on the business of a dog-fighter in the 
East End of London. He had a valuable dog called " Tiger," 
which had cost him a large sum, and which had won a great 
deal of money in dog fights. He had a fight on for the dog for 
ten pounds, but a few days before it was to take place a little 
child of his died, and he concluded to go to a public-house 



I2 8 THE MINER'S OPINION. 

and try to forget his sorrow in smoking and drinking. But 
on the way he thought: " Well, there's Moody and Sankey; 
suppose I go up and hear them ? " He came to our meeting, 
and he went out thinking it was all very good, but it did not 
concern him. The dog-fighting business was very dull, and 
having no sport to go to he came to the meetings again. This 
time Mr. Aitken was the preacher, and the dog-fighter said it 
seemed as if the preacher left off speaking to the audience and 
directed his remarks straight at him. He slid down lower in 
his seat so that the preacher could not see him, but he only hit 
him harder than before. The service being over he felt very 
uncomfortable, and he made inquiries. After a great deal of 
talk he was enabled by the grace of God to trust simply in 
Jesus, and from that time he was happy. But there was his 
dog! What was he to do with him? Every time he looked 
at Tiger he saw a terrible link between his past life and his 
present, and he was afraid if he sold him he would only lead 
some one else into sin. So he decided to drown the dog, al- 
though it had cost a good sum of money, and was a valuable 
animal. This he did ; he tied him in a sack and drowned him 
in the river. 

When I was holding meetings at WharneclifTe, a coal dis- 
trict in England, a great burly miner came up to me and said 
in his Yorkshire dialect : 

" Dost know who was at meetin' t'night? " 

" No," I answered. 

" Why," said he, " so-and-so was there " (mentioning a 
name). 

The name was a familiar one. He was a very bad man, one 
of the wickedest men in Yorkshire, according to his own con- 
fession, and according to the opinion of everybody who knew 
him. 

" Weel," said the man, " he cam' into meetin' an' said ye 
didn't preach right ; he said ye preached nothin' but love o' 
Christ ; an' that won't do for drunken miners ; ye want t ; shake 
'em over a pit ; an' he says he'll ne'er come again." 



GOD HAS SENT THY FATHER HOME. 



I29 



He thought I didn't preach about hell. 

I didn't expect to see the miner again, but he came the next 
night right from the coal-pit, his face unwashed and with all 
his working clothes on. He sat down on one of the seats that 
were used for children, and got as near to me as possible. The 
sermon was love, from first to last. He listened attentively, 
but by-and-by I saw him wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his 
rough coat. Soon after we had an inquiry-meeting, when 
some praying miners got around him, and it wasn't long before 
he cried, "O Lord, save me! I am lost; Jesus have mercy 
upon me ; " and that night he left the meeting a new man. 

His wife told me what occurred when he came home that 
night. His little children heard him coming along — they 
knew the step of his heavy clogs — and they ran to their 
mother in terror, clinging to her skirts. He opened the door 
as gently as could be. He had a habit of banging the door. 
My friends, if a man becomes converted, it will even make a 
difference in the slamming of doors. When he came into the 
house and saw the children clinging to their mother, frightened, 
he just stooped down and picked up the youngest girl in his 
arms, and looked at her, while the tears rolled down his cheeks, 
and he said : 

" Mary, Mary, God has sent thy father home to thee," and 
he kissed her. He took up another : 

*' God has sent thy father home ; " and he went from one 
to another, and kissed them all. Then he came to his wife and 
putting his arms around her neck, he said : 

" Don't cry, lass ; don't cry. God has sent thy husband 
home at last." All she could do was to put her arms around 
his neck and sob. Then he said : 

" Have we got a Bible in the house, lass? " They hadn't. 

" Well, lass, if we haven't, we must pray." They got down 
on their knees, and all that he could say was : 

' ' Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, 
Look upon a little child; 
Pity my simplicity ' 



30 



IN THE DEPTHS OF DESPAIR. 



for Jesus Christ's sake, amen." It was a simple prayer, but 
God answered it. While I was at Barnet some time after that, a 
friend came to me and said : " I have good news for you. So- 
and-so (mentioning the miner's name) is preaching the gospel 
everywhere he goes — in the pit, and out of the pit, and trying 
to win everybody to the Lord Jesus Christ." 

Some years ago, a man who is now a very dear friend of 
mine was engaged to be married to a beautiful girl. He had 
everything that heart could desire ; money, health, and grand 
business prospects ; and in the near future he would have a wife 
and a happy home. In imagination he lived in the beautiful 
castles he built in the air, and every castle had a golden minaret ; 
for when we build with the imagination we do not count the 
cost. All at once, as though a flash of lightning had come out 
of a clear sky, illness fell upon his betrothed, and she suddenly 
died. The shock to him was terrible. He was a man of large 
heart and generous sympathies, and those are they who make 
the best or worst men in the world. Broken down by grief 
he rushed into every sort of dissipation which New York life 
affords, — and .\ T ew York life is very rich in that sort of 
material, — and he squandered an immense amount of money — 
nearly all he had. What he wanted was to forget, and he went 
on from bad to worse until he reached the black mud of moral 
iniquity. One day in the midst of all this, by one of those in- 
stincts that you and I can understand, he was led to open his 
safe and take from it a small package containing a little silver 
key, — the key which he himself had turned in the casket of his 
beloved, — and a tress of auburn hair. He looked at them and 
started back in horror as he reflected upon the gulf that now 
separated him from her, and he turned to a companion and 
asked if he thought he should ever see her again. His com- 
panion answered : " I don't think you ever will. I don't see 
how you can. The life you and I have been living these last 
twelve months does not lead that way. It leads down the 
other side, and you and I can never look a pure woman in the 
face again." The poor fellow burst into tears, and wringing 



THE PRODIGAL IN LONDON. j^ I 

his hands, he cried : "Oh, I must meet her again. If there is 
anything in religion by which I can get rid of my past life, 
I am going to get rid of it, and I am going to right-about face, 
and keep my eyes upon Heaven. If she is there, I am going 
there too." He came to see me, and wrung my hand in a way 
I cannot describe, and there was a great resolution in his heart. 
One Sunday morning, while the memory of that auburn tress 
and silver key was fresh in his mind, he joined my church ; and 
being asked if he would like to go back to the past, he ex- 
claimed : " No, I have found a home at last, and I cannot 
go back to despair." 

William Dorset, the Yorkshire farmer, was preaching one 
night in London, and in closing his meeting he said there 
wasn't a man in London so far gone but that the Lord could 
save him. A lady missionary whom I knew, had found a sick 
man in one of the most squalid parts of the East End of Lon- 
don, who said there was no hope for him ; he had sinned away 
his day of grace. She went to Mr. Dorset, and said : 

" Mr. Dorset, will you go with me and see that man, and 
tell him what you said ? " 

He said he would. She led him down a narrow street until 
they came to a dilapidated five-story tenement house, and away 
up in the garret he found a young man lying upon a bed of 
straw. He bent over him and whispered in his ear, and called 
him his friend. The young man looked startled, and said : 

" You are mistaken in the person when you say, ' My 
friend.' " 

" How is that? " said Mr. Dorset. 

" Well, sir, I have no friends. No one cares for me." 

Mr. Dorset told him that Christ was just as much his friend 
as of any man in London. Poor prodigal ! After he had 
talked with him for some time, he prayed with him, and read 
to him out of the Bible, and at last the light of the Gospel began 
to break in upon that darkened heart. The young man said 
he thought he could die happy if he could only know that his 
father was willing to forgive him. Mr. Dorset said: 



132 



REACHING A FATHER'S HEART. 



" Where does your father live?" 

" In the West End of London," giving him an address. 

" I will go and see him, and see if he won't forgive you." 

" No, I don't want you to do that. He has disowned me. 
My father would abuse you if you should even speak to him 
about me. He does not recognize me as his son any more." 

" But I will go and see him," Mr. Dorset said. 

He went to the West End of London, to the address the 
young man had given him, and there he found a fine mansion. 
A servant dressed in livery came to the door, and Mr. Dorset 
was ushered into the drawing-room. Presently the father, 
a fine looking man, came into the room. Mr. Dorset held out 
his hand to shake hands with him, and said : 

"You have a son Joseph, have you not?" 

When the father heard that, he withdrew his hand, and said : 

" If you have come to talk about that worthless vagabond, 
I want you to leave the house. He is no son of mine." 

" Yes, he is your son now, but he will not be yours long," 
Mr. Dorset quietly said. 

" Is he sick? " said the father. 

" Yes," said Mr. Dorset, " he is dying. I haven't come 
to ask you for money, for I will see that he has a decent burial. 
I have only come to ask you to forgive him ? " 

" Forgive him ! forgive him ! " cried the father, " I would 
have forgiven him long ago if I thought he wanted me to. Do 
you know where he is ? " 

" Yes, he is over in the East End." 

" Can you take me to him ? " 

" Yes." 

The father ordered his carnage, and they were soon on the 
way. When they reached the tenement house, he said : 

" Did you find my boy here? " 

" Yes." 

" Oh ! if I had only known he wanted me to, I would have 
taken him home long ago." 

When the father entered the squalid room he could hardly 



FORGIVEN. 



135 



recognize his long-lost son. He bent over and kissed him. 
The first thing the boy said was : 

" Father, can you forgive me ? " 

" I would have forgiven you long, long ago, my son, if I 
had only known you wanted me to. Let me take you home." 

" No, father, I am too far gone, I am dying ; but I can die 
happy in this garret, now that I know you have forgiven me. 
And I think God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven me." 

In a little while he breathed his last, and out of that dark 
garret, from a wretched bed of straw, his soul rose up into the 
kingdom of God. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PRODIGAL SON. 

A Noble Character — Seven Children, and No Two Alike — A Jolly 
Fellow — A Father Who was " a Little Soft " — Trying to Borrow 
a Dollar — A Scheme of the Devil — Saloon-keepers and Free 
Lunches — The Gnawings of Hunger — " Use or Lose " — A Jew 
Caring for Swine — Sowing Tares and Reaping Shame — The 
Hardest of Battles — "There Goes a Tramp" — Watching for 
His Son — Love Makes the Eyesight Keen — The Forgotten 
Speech — A Story of Mr. Moody's Early Life — A Mother's Grief 
for the Wanderer — The Little Circle By the Fireside — Tears 
and Silence — The Roar of the Storm — The Wanderer's Re- 
turn — What if there Were Two Graves There? — The Face of 
a Stranger — His Tears of Penitence Betray Him — Welcomed 
and Forgiven. 

I AM inclined to think that about ninety-nine persons out of 
every hundred start out on their career with a false idea 
of life. The prodigal son thought he could do far better 
away from home. Perhaps he didn't like home restraints, 
didn't like home influences ; perhaps his father was too re- 
ligious, and he wanted to sow a few wild oats ; he wanted to 
give loose rein to his passions ; and perhaps he thought he 
could get rich faster in a far-off country. Perhaps he didn't 
tell his father when he wanted the heritage divided that he was 
going away ; in fact, it might have been an after-thought with 
himself; but when he got everything into his own hands he 
took his departure. 

We are not told where he went ; perhaps down into Egypt ; 
that was a very prosperous country at that time, and there were 
some very flourishing cities there. Memphis was a prosperous 
city at that time. Perhaps he did not get on well at home with 
that elder brother, for they were as unlike as Esau and Jacob, 

(136) 



THE LIBERTY OF SON-SHIP. 



137 



or Cain and Abel; they didn't agree. One was proud, arro- 
gant, and conceited ; the other lived only for the present, and 
was ready for anything that would give him pleasure. One 
owed his downfall to his conceit and self-righteousness, and the 
other to his passions and lusts. 

I want to call your attention to the nobility of that father. 
I think he is one of the noblest characters in history. He had 
great difficulty in managing those two boys. They were so 
unlike that what was medicine for one was rank poison to the 
other. The elder brother didn't want to enjoy his inheritance 
with his father, because his father didn't give him a kid to 
enjoy with his friends. You will find on many of the public 
buildings in France, including prisons, the words, " Liberty, 
Equality, Fraternity." " Liberty " is a fine word to display on 
a prison where men are locked up in iron cells ! Liberty is 
just what they haven't got. These words are also displayed 
on all their madhouses ; a good deal of liberty in a madhouse, 
with a straight-jacket on ! Liberty is just what that father 
wanted with these two boys, and that is just what they didn't 
want him to have with them. That is just what the King of 
Heaven wants, and that is what the world does not want. He 
wants us all to be sons. That is liberty. That was what that 
father meant when he said to his son : " Son, thou art ever with 
me, and all that I have is thine." That is just it ; it is all there. 
The elder brother didn't sin any more than the younger, nor 
the younger any more than the elder. 

Let us follow that prodigal son. I can imagine him down 
in Memphis. If they had cigars there he probably smoked the 
best, drank the best wine, and had the best turnout there was 
in the city. He was very popular. You know most any man 
is popular now-a-days that has a pocket full of money, and 
nothing to do but spend it. Oh yes, he is a jolly good fellow ! 
I have no doubt there were many mothers down there in 
Memphis who were glad to introduce this young man to their 
daughters. He moved in the best society. Ah, a rich man's 
son from Palestine! Nothing to do and plenty of money! 



138 



A GREAT MISTAKE. 



I don't believe there is anything that will ruin a man much 
quicker than idleness. I believe that the command to work 
six days and rest on the seventh is binding on us yet. I have 
great respect for a man that makes something out of himself. 
A rich man's son doesn't have an even chance in this world. 
The father earns money and lays it away for the son, and he 
generally contrives to spend it ; he doesn't have a chance to use 
and improve the talent that is in him. I was once asked what 
I thought possessed a certain rich man to blow his brains out ; 
and I said, " He hadn't anything else to do." He had plunged 
into all kinds of pleasure, and he had sampled the world 
through and through, and then he had nothing else to do but 
to kill himself. A young man who has nothing to do is the 
devil's playfellow. 

I can't conceive of a greater mistake a rich man can make 
than to pile up wealth and leave it to his sons ; you had better 
be your own executor, and dispose of your property before you 
die. I have got two sons, and I think if the youngest should 
say to me, " Father, you just divide with me," I would say, 
" If you want money, wait until you earn it." 

I think the father of the prodigal son was a little soft to give 
the boy, while he lived, his own inheritance. It don't take a 
young man a great while to spend a large amount of money 
with gamblers and harlots. It don't take long to spend money 
anyhow. Most any one can do that ; it don't even require 
brains to spend money. The prodigal son squandered it very 
lavishly; I suppose that the people with whom he spent it 
called him a very liberal young man. 

Perhaps five years go by, and then he has got to the " end 
of his rope," as they say, and his money is all gone. When 
a man's money is gone his so-called friends drop off very fast. 
If a man or woman has friends who are friends merely on 
account of their position in society, their friendship is good for 
nothing. This young man found that out. When his money 
was all squandered he was in great distress, and all his so-called 
friends left him. I can imagine him going to one of them who 



THE PRODIGAL IN WANT. 



139 



had helped him to spend his money, and trying to borrow a 
dollar ; and his former friend laughs at him and says, " Why, I 
wouldn't lend you a cent, you stupid fellow ! You came down 
here with thousands, and you have gone through the whole 
of it." That is taking place all the time. 

Let a young man go to a great city and spend his money 
very fast, and when it is all gone let him go to the men that 
helped ruin him, and they will just kick him out. They do ! 
I have seen it ! Saloon-keepers strip a man ; when he has no 
more money to give them they kick him out ! The devil never 
gives ! In a good many saloons they have free lunches. That 
is only a dodge of the devil to entice you in there. Just go in 
there a few days and take a free lunch, and the next thing you 
know you are buying their whiskey. 

If they had pawnbrokers in Memphis at that time, you 
might see the prodigal son going to the pawnshops ; perhaps 
that is the way he got rid of the ring that was the sign of son- 
ship ; he didn't have the ring when he came back. His good 
clothes were all gone ; he had either pawned them or dis- 
posed of them in some other way. 

About that time a mighty famine arose in that land, and he 
began to be in want. He had never known what it was to be 
in want before ; but now he began to feel the gnawings of 
hunger. There was one redeeming feature about him ; he 
wouldn't beg, and he wouldn't steal. There is a good deal of 
hope for a young man who won't beg or steal. 

He began to look around to find something to do. A good 
many young men have come to me to get something to do — 
prodigals, and I don't know what to do with them. They are 
good for nothing! If a merchant should put them behind a 
counter in his store they couldn't do anything. Why, put 
them behind a bar in one of these saloons, and they would drink 
so much liquor a saloon-keeper wouldn't have them. Cer- 
tainly they couldn't work with a pickaxe or a shovel, because 
their arms are as soft and their flesh as flabby as a baby's ; they 
couldn't earn their salt by manual labor. Put them out in the 



40 



FAMISHED AND FRIENDLESS. 



woods to chop wood, and they wouldn't chop enough to keep 
themselves warm ! I think it was a good thing for the prodigal 
son when he was compelled to do something. God's law is 
" Use or lose." If a man does not use what God has given 
him he will lose what he has. 

This young man had been living in idleness ; what was he 
good for? Thank God, he found work, but the meanest work 
that a Jew could do ! Did you ever see a Jew taking care of 
swine? No, you never did. I tell you, it is pretty hard work 
to get a Jew to take care of swine. Yet, here was a rich man's 
son from Palestine in that far country, and his job was to gather 
husks and care for and feed swine! Pretty low, wasn't it? 
But that is better than begging; it is better than stealing. 
There is a chance for a man who will carry in coal and shovel 
snow ! There is hope for that man. I believe there is a chance 
for any man to rise when he is willing to earn his bread by the 
sweat of his brow. 

" And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks 
that the swine did eat." The devil gets a good grip before he 
pulls a man down ; and when he gets him down how he holds 
him, and he won't let him up. Talk about aiding tramps ! 
When this young man was hungry no one gave to him. That 
brought him to his senses. I honestly believe we make a great 
mistake in giving tramps and footpads aid. I believe that the 
best thing for them is to let them come to want, so that they 
will come to themselves. As long as they can get food for the 
mere asking they will tramp all around the country. If the 
prodigal son's father had sent him money every thirty days he 
never would have returned home ; it is a good thing that he 
got to the end of his own resources. Then he had to think. 
It is a grand thing to get men to thinking. If he had stopped 
to think in the first place he probably never would have left 
home ; he wouldn't have squandered his property the way he 
did. That is the trouble with people ; they rush madly into all 
kinds of vice and sin ; they don't stop to think. They believe 
they can sow to the wind and not reap the whirlwind ; they 



MEMORIES OF HOME. 



41 



think they can sow to the flesh and reap from the Spirit ; that 
they can sow tares and reap wheat. They think they can sow 
these things and affect nobody but themselves; but if I sow 
tares I have got to reap shame for my whole family ! 

Well, after the prodigal had fed the swine that morning, he 
leaned his head upon his hands, as Elijah did when he came 
from Carmel and sat under the juniper tree, and began to 
think. His mind traveled back into the past, and he thought 
of the home he left in the Valley of the Jordan. He heard the 
murmuring of the breeze through the great shade trees on the 
banks of the brook where he used to play ; he thought of the 
good times that he used to have there with his brother. Then 
he thought of his mother and how she tried to direct his steps, 
and how she taught him to pray at her knee in his early boy- 
hood. Then he thought of his father ; and the thought dawned 
on him, " I don't believe there is any one in the wide world who 
loves me like my father. I didn't think so when I left home, 
but I don't find any one down here in Egypt who takes half 
as much interest in me as my father did. I remember that 
every night and morning he used to pray for both of us boys. 
I remember when he prayed the last morning I left home, and 
how he broke down and couldn't finish his prayer. I re- 
member when he shook hands with me at the gate, he held my 
hand, and I saw his chin quiver and the tears trickled down his 
cheeks as he said, ' My heart is breaking ; I hope you won't be 
gone long.' I believe my father loves me better than any- 
body else. If I should die here I don't know that anybody 
would bury me ; perhaps they would leave me to the swine." 
Do you know, that is the greatest battle that a man ever 
fought ? 

Then came the question, " Shall I go home ? I can't go in 
these rags ; I am ashamed to go as I am ; I wish I was in better 
condition. If I go home looking like this what will my old 
schoolmates and neighbors say? They won't recognize me. 
When I left home five years ago I had my ring, the sign of son- 
ship, and I had good shoes, and good clothes, and plenty of 



142 CONQUERING HIS PRIDE. 

them. Now, I have no shoes, no ring, and my clothes are in 
rags ; if I go back as I am everyone will look down upon me." 

Then pride rose up and said, " No, you can't go home." 
The worst enemy we have to overcome is this cursed pride in 
our own hearts, and the hardest thing that young man had to 
do was to conquer his pride. Do you know what pride made 
him do and what he lost ? I will tell you. It is a good thing to 
take an inventory of what the prodigal son lost. He lost 
all his money, and all his so-called friends in that far-off 
country. He lost his testimony. There wasn't a man in that 
country that would believe that he was a son of a rich man. I 
suppose some of the people who lived in the high places of that 
country passed him by unnoticed, when they saw him in his 
rags among the swine. And one would say to another : 

" Look at that poor wretch ! " 

" Call me a wretch? I am the son of a rich man in Pales- 
tine." 

" Yes, you look like a rich man's son ! " 

He had lost his testimony, and nobody would believe him. 
He had lost his character. He might have brought a pocket- 
ful of good letters from home when he left there, but his char- 
acter was now all gone, his reputation was blasted, and his good 
name tarnished. He had no food, no ring, no robe, no shoes, 
and his time had been wasted. I tell you when you serve Satan 
your time is lost ! 

But there is one thing he never lost — thank God for that ! 
■ — he never lost his father's love, and that is what brought him 
home. That father loved his son all the while he was gone, 
and he loved him just as much as he ever did ; the son hadn't 
got away from his father love, but while he was gone he didn't 
get the benefit of it. God loves you, but you don't get the 
benefit of His love, because you have gone away from Him. 
When the truth began to dawn upon the prodigal that his 
father loved him it brought him back to his home. 

Oh, prodigal ! if you would come back, I believe the news 
would sweep around the throne of God. One of the sweetest 



PRAYING FOR THE ABSENT SON. 



43 



chapters in the Bible to me is that chapter that tells what 
causes joy in heaven — that a prodigal has made up his mind 
that he will come back to the Father who loves him so. It 
was a very hard thing for the young man to make up his mind 
to return ; his pride rebelled against it ; but when he made up 
his mind to do it then it was that he found the way had become 
easy, and the light of heaven flashed across his path and showed 
him the way home. 

If you had gone into that home a week before the prodigal 
son came back you would have learned that his father loved 
him just as much as ever he did. If you had been there at 
morning prayers you would have heard him pray, not only for 
that elder son, the first born, and for his servants, but before he 
finished his morning worship you would have heard him pray 
for his absent son. If you had asked the servants to whom 
their master referred in his prayer, they would have said : 

" To his absent son." 

" Do you mean that he has two sons ? " 

: ' Yes, the younger son came of age, and his father gave 
him his portion of the inheritance. He left home, and since 
then his father hasn't heard from him." 

" Where is his other son ? " 

" Right over there in the field." 

Go into the field and there you find the elder brother, and 
you ask him what kind of a man his younger brother is. 

" Oh, he is a mean, low, worthless vagabond ! " 

" Would you like to have him come back home ? " 

" No, I hope he will never come back ; if he does he will 
disgrace us all." 

Go and talk with that father about his sons, and the moment 
you mention the younger one, how his face lights up. " My 
youngest boy is away ; I have been looking for him for years, 
and I have been in hopes he would come back every day." 
" Would you forgive him if he came back ? " " Forgive him ! 
Why, there is nothing but love in my heart for him. I have 
prayed for him every night since he went away ; I have prayed 



T44 



ON THE WAY HOME. 



that God will let me see him again before I die. If I wasn't 
so old and feeble I would go down to Egypt to find him and 
bring him home. He does not know how I love him ; if he did, 
he would not stay away so long." I don't believe there is a 
sinner in this world that would stay away from God if he knew 
how God loved him ! 

When the absent son remembered how his father loved 
him, he started for home. If you had seen him passing along 
the highway you would have said, " There goes a tramp." Not 
a bit of it ! He is an heir of glory ! a joint-heir with Jesus 
Christ ! Think of it ! He had been down in the pit, but, 
thank God ! he is now out of the pit. 

I remember the first time I was in Europe and had been 
gone for six months, how I wanted to get back, and when I 
came in sight of my native land, and could see the black smoke 
rising from the city chimneys, I began to rejoice that I was in 
my own country again. I can imagine that prodigal as he 
crossed the line and entered Palestine again, how his heart 
began to beat fast, and his eyes filled with tears of joy. He 
said, " The moment I get upon that mountain peak over there 
on that blue ridge in the distance I shall see the Valley of the 
Jordan; I shall see my old home." He pushes on. His heart 
is light, and that made his face bright ; it seemed as though 
every obstacle had been swept out of the way, it was so easy 
for him to return home ! 

At three o'clock it was his father's custom to go on the roof 
of his house and pray towards Jerusalem. I can see the old, 
white-haired man there on his knees with his face towards 
Jerusalem praying that God would bring back his wandering 
son. After he had prayed I can see him put up his hand to 
keep the sun away from his eyes, and he looks off towards the 
west in the same direction that his son went when he left home. 
Many a time has that father watched for his return. That after- 
noon I can see him watching again from the roof. Suddenly, 
he thinks he sees a man far off on the highway coining towards 
him. * By and by the man gets a little nearer, and a little nearer, 



THE WANDERER'S WELCOME. 



145 



and he is soon near enough for the father to see him. Love 
makes the eyesight keen. Something told him that it was his 
long-lost son. And though he was still a great way off, the 
father ran to meet him. He didn't wait until he got to the 
threshold. The servants in the house saw their master run- 
ning, and they thought it was very strange, and they ran to the 
hedge and looked over to see what it meant. They saw a man 
that looked like a tramp, and the old man had his arms around 
his neck and was kissing him. 

The wanderer had a very fine speech all made up before- 
hand ; it was a very fine speech. Did you ever make up a 
speech, and then forget every word of it when you wanted to 
deliver it ? This boy had made one up ; he had it all planned 
out. I remember the first time I ever spoke for Christ. I 
made up a speech and wrote it down ; but when I got up to 
speak I forgot every word of it. The prodigal son turned his 
speech over in his mind all the way home. " Father, I have 
sinned against Heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy 
to be called thy son ; make me as one of thy hired servants." 
Before he had time to say more his father stopped him. What 
a false idea that son had of his father ! That father make his 
son a servant ! " Father, I have sinned " — the old man didn't 
want to hear another word ; that was enough. " I have sinned " 
— the father fell upon his neck and began to kiss him. The 
servants came running out, and the old man gave his orders : 
" Bring out the best robe ! " No old, second-hand robe that 
that elder brother had cast off ! Then he noticed his son's 
ring was gone, and he said to another servant, " Bring a ring 
and put on his finger." Then he noticed his feet, and he said 
to another servant, " Get a pair of shoes and put on his feet.*' 
Then he said to another servant, " Go and kill the fatted calf." 
I don't believe there was ever a calf killed as quickly as that one 
was, or a feast prepared as soon as that feast. I don't believe 
the returned prodigal ever tasted meat that was as good as that 
fatted calf! The prodigal was no longer bareheaded, bare- 
footed, and in rags. The father didn't let the elder brother 



: 4 6 



BREAD ENOUGH AND TO SPARE. 



see him in that condition. I can see the old man sitting at the 
head of the table. He never tasted a morsel of food ; all he 
could do was to feast his eyes on his returned son, who was 
never so dear to him in his life. 

I have heard people say, " I am afraid if I am converted I 
won't hold out." I have seen men feeding swine, who were 
afraid if they returned to their father's house they would want 
to go back to feeding swine again. Just imagine the prodigal 
son, as he sits at the feast, bowing his head and weeping, and 
the father saying, " My son, are you sorry you came home? " 

" No, father, it is the happiest moment in all my life." 

" Then what are you crying about ? " 

" I am crying because I am afraid I shall want to go back 
to feeding swine again." 

My friend, if you are not tired and sick of swine, stay 
there ! After you have returned to your father's house, and 
sat at his table and eaten of the fatted calf, is there any danger 
that you will want to go back to feeding swine ? A man may 
return to his cups after he has been saved from drink ; but I 
tell you I don't believe there will be much backsliding if you 
really come back home delivered by the power of God, and 
become a joint heir with Jesus Christ. May God bring you 
back ! There is bread enough and to spare ! God wants you 
with His sons and daughters. He wants the prodigal that is 
feeding swine. That prodigal's father represents your Father 
and mine, and He is waiting to make a feast for you if you will 
only come back to His house. 

Just as we were about to leave Liverpool for London to 
preach a lady came to see us privately. With tears and sobs 
she told a pitiful story. She said that her son, nineteen years 
of age, had left her. She gave me his photograph and said : 

" Mr. Moody, you stand before many and large assemblies. 
My boy may be in London now. Oh, look earnestly at the 
audiences you will preach to and you may see my dear boy be- 
fore you. Should you see him tell him to come back to me. 
Oh, implore him to come to his sorrowing mother, to his de- 



FORGIVENESS AWAITS THE PENITENT. 



47 



serted home ! He may be in trouble ; he may be suffering ; 
tell him for his loving mother that all is forgiven and forgotten, 
and he will find comfort and peace at home." 

On the back of this photograph she had written his full 
name and address ; she had noted his complexion ; the color of 
his eyes and hair ; why he had left home, and the cause of his 
so doing. " Whenever you preach, Air. Moody, look for my 
poor boy," were the parting words of that mother. 

A man once asked me, " How is it that a man who has lived 
an ungodly life can be saved all at once?" Why, God so 
loves the sinner that He is willing to give him salvation in- 
stantly — He wants to save every one. The trouble is that we 
don't want God to be merciful ; we don't want His forgiveness. 
God is full of compassion and love. It is the spirit of the devil 
that makes you believe the sins committed during the past 
twenty years cannot be forgiven. Suppose a father has a son 
whom he has not seen for twenty years. Well, when he arrives 
home one night his servants say to him : 

" Your son has returned." 

" What ! " he exclaims, " my absent son here — in this 
house? " 

" Yes, he is in the kitchen ; we wanted him to go into the 
parlor, but he wouldn't ; he said the kitchen was good enough 
for him." 

He finds his son, and the boy cries : 

" Father, father, I have been bad ; I haven't done a good 
act in twenty years ; I have been very unkind to you ; but, father, 
won't you forgive me? " 

Say, father, wouldn't you forgive him? Wouldn't you? 
I would like to see a father who would not. 

I can tell you something about this out of my own experi- 
ence. My father died suddenly when we were little children, 
and my good mother had a hard time with her large family of 
boys and girls. After a while one of the older boys took it into 
his head that he could make his fortune all alone by himself, 
and so he ran away. 

IO 



I48 THE GROUP AT THE FIRESIDE. 

For years and years we heard nothing of him. Sometimes 
it seemed as if my mother's heart would break. " Oh, if I could 
only know he was dead," she would sometimes say, " it would 
be better than this. Maybe he is sick and in need, or maybe 
he has fallen in with wicked men, who will make him as bad as 
themselves." 

We used to sit around the fire on stormy winter nights and 
listen to the stories that mother used to tell us about our father ; 
about what he said, how he looked, how he was kind to a friend 
and lost a great deal of money by him, and how our home was 
mortgaged, and we were poor; but if anybody happened to 
speak the name of that absent boy a great silence would fall 
upon us, the tears would come into my mother's eyes, and then 
we would all steal away softly to bed, whispering our good- 
nights, because we felt that the mention of that name was like 
a sword thrust to the heart of our mother. 

After we got to bed we would lie awake and listen to the 
roaring of the wind and storm, thinking perhaps he was out in 
the cold somewhere. Maybe he had gone to sea, and while 
we were snug in bed he might be keeping watch on the storm- 
beaten deck, perhaps climbing the mast in just such darkness 
and storm. Now and then, between the gusts we would hear 
a sound like a wail of the summer wind when it used to make 
harp-strings of the leaves and branches of the great maple 
trees in the dooryard ; now, soft and gentle ; then rising louder 
and louder. How we would hold our breath and listen ! 
Mother was sitting up to pray for her lost boy. Next morning, 
perhaps, she would send one of us down to the post-office to 
ask for a letter — a letter from him, though she never said so. 
But no letter ever came. 

Long years afterward, when our mother was growing old, 
and her hair was turning gray, one summer afternoon a dark, 
sunburned man, with heavy black beard, was seen coming in 
at the gate. 

He came up under the window first and looked in, as if he 
were afraid there might be strangers living in the house. He 



A MOTHER'S GREETING. 



149 



had stopped at the churchyard, on his way through the village, 
to see whether there were two graves instead of one where our 
father had been laid so many years ago, but there was only one 
grave there; surely, his mother was not dead. But, still, she 
might have moved away. Then he went around and knocked 
at the door, and mother went to open it. 

Years of hardship and exposure to sun and storm had made 
him strange even to his mother. She invited him to come in, 
but he did not move or speak ; he stood there humbly and peni- 
tently ; and, as a sense of his ingratitude began to overwhelm 
him, the big tears found their way over his weather-beaten 
cheeks. By those tears the mother recognized her long-lost 
son. He had come back at last. There was so much love of 
the old home in him that he couldn't always stay away. " Oh, 
it is my lost son ! " she cried, " my dear, dear son," and she en- 
treated him to come in. But he would not cross the threshold 
until he confessed his sin, and heard from the same lips which 
had prayed so often and so long for him the sweet assurance 
that he was forgiven. " No, no," said he, " I cannot come in 
until you forgive me." 

Do you suppose that mother kept her boy outside until he 
had gone through with a long list of apologies, done a long list 
of penances, and said ever so many prayers? Not a bit of it. 
She took him to her heart at once ; she made him come right in ; 
she forgave him all, rejoiced over him more than over all the 
other children who had not been away. 

And that is just the way God forgives all the prodigal souls 
who come back to Him. O wanderer, come home ! come 
home! 



CHAPTER III. 

THE NEW BIRTH. 

A Photograph of the Heart — " I Will Take Fourteen Dozen " — 
Breaking the Plate and Abusing the Artist — " Ticketed " through 
to Heaven — "My Brother is an Archdeacon" — Signing Good 
Resolutions with Blood — The Crab-apple Tree — "Can't You 
Give Me Something To Do?" — Turned Out of House and 
Home — A Personal Experience — Story of the Crane and the 
Swan — "I Want Snails" — The Descent into the Pit — No 
Such Thing as Wind — A Puzzling Question — The Mystery of 
Life — A Thrilling Incident — " He Isn't Going to Catch Me" — 
Cornering Him in One End of a Pew — Jumping Over the Backs 
of the Pews — "I Am that Nephew" — Joking at Mr. Moody's 
Expense — " You Ought to be a Different Man " — The Story of 
a Drunkard's Downfall — Thrilling Testimony — A Story of the 
Civil War — The Empty Cot. 

1WAS told some years ago when I was preaching in a New 
England town, on the New Birth, that that doctrine would 
do for the slums of great cities, but not for intelligent and 
cultivated people. There is no difference. Culture is right in 
its place, but that is not the New Birth. You may be a moral 
man and not be a Christian, but no man can be a Christian 
without being a moral man. The longer I live and mingle 
with men, the more I doubt that men and women are " natur- 
ally good." Who was Nicodemus? Was he a drunkard, a 
gambler, or a thief ? He was one of the best men in Jerusalem ; 
no doubt about that. He was an honorable Councillor ; he be- 
longed to the Sanhedrim ; he held a very high position ; he was 
an orthodox man, and he was one of the very soundest of men. 
Why, if he were here to-day he would be made president of 
one of our colleges ; he would be put at once into one of our 
seminaries, and have " Reverend " prefixed to his name — 
" Reverend Nicodemus, D.D.," or even " LL.D." And yet 

(150) 



FLATTERING PHOTOGRAPHS. 



51 



what did Christ say to him? " Except a man be born again, 
he cannot see the kingdom of God." 

A perfect God couldn't give an imperfect standard ; a per- 
fect God sees that the law is pure and good ; but we are not 
good if we don't come up to the standard. Now, if a man 
should advertise that he could take a photograph of people's 
hearts and give a perfect likeness, do you think he would get 
a customer? If we have a photograph taken we dress ourselves 
up and crimp our hair, and we have it taken sitting and stand- 
ing, and sitting in this position and sitting in that position, and 
standing in this position and standing in that position, and if 
the artist makes us look handsome when we are homely, we 
say, " You are the first man that has ever done me justice ; I 
will take fourteen dozen." And we send them around to our 
friends, and say, " Yes, that is a good likeness." Suppose the 
artist could get a true photograph of the heart of man, do you 
think he would get many customers? A good many of us 
would break the plate and abuse the artist. Some would say, 
" I wouldn't like to have my wife see my heart. I wouldn't 
like to have her read my secret thoughts." The heart of man 
is a fountain of corruption, vileness, and pollution, and there 
is no hope for his being saved until he finds out that he is bad. 

There is nothing that will close a man's mouth who boasts 
of being pure, and good, and moral, as to get a look at him- 
self in God's looking-glass. Just a little while before the 
Chicago fire I said to my family one morning that I would 
come home early after dinner and take them out to drive. My 
little boy jumped up and said : 

" Papa, will you take us up to Lincoln Park to see the 
bears?" 

" Yes, I'll take you up to Lincoln Park to see the bears." 

I hadn't more than left the house before he began to tease 
his mother to get him ready. She washed him, put a white 
dress on him, and got him all ready. Then he wanted to go 
out doors. When he was a little fellow he had a strange pas- 
sion for eating dirt, and when I drove up his face was covered 



152 



PURITY FROM WITHIN. 



with mud and his dress was very dirty. He came running up 
to me and wanted me to take him into the carriage and go to 
Lincoln Park. 

" Willie," I said, " I can't take you in that condition ; you 
must be washed first." 

" No, I'se clean ! " 

" No, you are not. You are dirty. You'll have to be 
washed before I can take you out driving." 

" O, I'se clean, I'se clean ; mamma washed me." 

" No," I said, " you are not." 

The little fellow began to cry, and I thought the quickest 
way to stop him was to let him look at himself. So I got out 
of the carriage, took him into the house, and showed him his 
dirty face in the looking-glass. That stopped his mouth. He 
never said his face was clean after he saw himself. But I 
didn't take the looking-glass to wash him with. I took him 
away to the water. The law is only given to show man his 
needs ; to show him his guilt — not to save him. 

Now, you will never make a man right as long as his heart 
is wrong. No outward reformation will make that life right. 
You will never get a pure stream as long as you have an im- 
pure fountain. Make the fountain good and the stream will 
be good. Make the tree good and the fruit will be good. 
Make the heart right, and the eye, the hand, the thoughts, the 
will, all will be " full of light." 

I think some ministers would be amazed if they should 
catechise some of their oldest members on the subject of the 
New Birth. I sometimes ask people who have been in the 
church for years, " What makes you think you have been 'born 
from above'?" " Well, because I go to church regularly." 
Satan goes to church as regularly as any church-member. He 
is there before it is dedicated ; he is always busy, and he will 
snatch away the " seed," if it is possible, so that it cannot stay 
in your heart. The idea that he is only to be found in gambling 
dens and brothels ! If there is any danger of men and women 
coming into God's kingdom, he will try to whisper wicked 



THEIR CLAIM TO HEAVEN. j^ 

thoughts into their hearts. If it was only attending church 
that is going to make people Christians, we would manage to 
get them there some way. A man may be a deep-dyed villain 
and go to church to cover up his villainy. I once met a man 
who said he would go to heaven if anybody did, for his daughter 
played the organ in church, and he entertained the minister. 
I once asked a woman if she were a Christian, and she replied : 
" My brother is an Archdeacon of the Church of England." 
She seemed to think because her brother was an Archdeacon 
that that sort of ticketed her through to Heaven. 

What is your hope? What makes you think you are a 
Christian? A good many people tell me that they were born 
in this country, and this is a Christian country. That is, they 
are to go to heaven because they were born in America. And 
some say, " I not only go to church, but I am a member." " I 
have been baptized." " I have been confirmed." " I have 
united with the church." You may do all of these things and 
not be " born of God." Did not Judas go out from the last 
supper and betray his Master for thirty pieces of silver? A 
man may go from the communion table and do the darkest 
deeds. If you could baptize people into the kingdom of God 
all you would have to do would be to pass a law that all chil- 
dren should be baptized. But that is not being " born of the 
Spirit," or " from above," or " again." Nor is being " born 
again " simply coming to revival meetings and having your 
feelings wrought upon, feeling sad and feeling good, and 
" turning over a new leaf," and making " good resolutions." 

When I was a young man I said I would " turn over a new 
leaf," and on Monday night the new leaf was as black as that 
of Saturday. I went so far once as to draw blood out of my 
veins and sign my good resolutions with it. It didn't hold. 
When a friend dies, you attend the funeral, make good resolu- 
tions, and tell the minister that you are going to " lead a differ- 
ent life." There's not a minister who does not have that kind 
of converts, those whose feelings have been greatly wrought 
upon by their sorrow. That is not the New Birth. 



154 



WHAT IT IS TO BE BORN OF GOD. 



WHAT IS IT? Listen. " He came unto His own, and 
His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to 
them gave He power to become the sons of God " — the 
power, the privilege, the authority, to become the sons of God ! 
" Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, 
nor of the will of man, but of God." BORN OF GOD. 

If I should take my watch and plant it, I wouldn't get little 
watches, would I? Why? Because the germ of life is not 
there. You may take a bushel of gravel and plant it, and you 
would not get more gravel, would you ? Why? Because the 
germ of life is not in it. But take a bushel of grain, and let the 
rain and the dew and the sun fall upon it, and see if there does 
not something come from it. W T hy? Because the germ of life 
is there. 

People talk about culture ! I have heard about culture 
until I am sick of the whole thing ! Cultivate a crab-apple 
tree, and the more you dig around it the more crab-apples 
you will have. In order to change the nature of the tree 
or the fruit you must graft in a new nature. Suppose I 
plow an acre of land next Spring. I begin Monday morning 
and I plow the ground lengthwise ; the next day I plow it 
crosswise ; the next day I plow it diagonally, and so on through 
May and June, varying the process by harrowing it and brush- 
ing it and rolling it, and I keep it up until trie last of October. 
Then you come along and say : 

" What in creation are you doing with that land? " 

" Well, I believe in a high state of culture ; I am cultivating 
it." 

"Why, I saw you plowing that same land last Spring; 
what are you going to put into it? " 

" I'm not going to put anything into it ; seed isn't necessary 
to culture, and I believe in a high state of culture." 

Take the Word of life into your heart and lay hold of it. 
Put the seed in and then cultivate all you want to. 

God can use children to bring others to Christ. I remem- 
ber a little boy who became a Christian. His father was a 



THE PRAYING BOY. 



155 



profane, drinking man, and he would not allow a minister to 
come into his house. Some one led the boy to Sunday-school, 
and he there found the Saviour and got a new heart. One 
day his father found him on his knees, and he asked him what 
he was doing. The boy said he was praying that Jesus would 
make him a good boy. His father said : " You have heard 
me say I would not have anyone living under my roof that 
prayed. I don't want you to pray any more. If I catch you 
praying again I will flog you." When Christ gets into the 
heart flogging will not keep us from Him. The boy prayed 
in secret. He was obedient, kind, and affectionate, and he 
tried to honor Christ. 

One day his father again found him on his knees, praying. 
He was very angry. He flogged the boy, and told him, in a 
great rage and with an oath, that if he caught him praying 
again he would make him leave the house. The lad kept on 
praying in secret that God would convert his father ; and it was 
not long before his father again found him praying. He 
ordered him to leave the house and take his things with him. 
He didn't have many things to take. Drunkards' children do 
not have many things. He went to his mother and said, 
" Good-bye, mother." The mother said, " My boy, where are 
you going?" "I don't know. Father says I can't stay at 
home any longer, because I've been praying." His mother 
knew it would do no good to remonstrate, so she took him to 
her bosom and kissed him. She did not know when she would 
see him again. He went to his little brother and his little 
sister and bade them good-bye and kissed them. He then bade 
his father good-bye, and told him that as long as he lived he 
would pray for him. He took his bundle and left the house, 
not knowing where he was going. He had not gone a great 
way before the Holy Spirit touched his father's heart. He ran 
down the street and overtook the boy, and said, " If religion 
will do this for yon, I want it." That boy had the privilege 
of leading his father to Christ. 

I am over sixty years old. God has showered blessings 



j^6 NEW J° Y AND HAPPINESS. 

upon me. My lot has fallen in very pleasant places, but there 
is one blessing high above them all. One night in 1855, it 
pleased God to reveal His Son to me, and I became a partaker 
of the divine nature. I was passing by Tremont Temple in 
Boston the next afternoon, and it seemed to me that the sun 
was shining brighter than ever before. I walked through the 
Common, and it seemed as if the birds were singing for my 
benefit. It seemed as if the old elms waved their branches for 
joy, and all Nature was at peace. I did not know myself. I 
love to tell people they can get something better than this 
whirl that keeps them always in a tumult. One night the 
Bible was as dry as a last year's almanac. I could not get 
interested in it. But the next morning it was a new book. 
The light of heaven shone on every page. It seemed as if the 
ink hadn't got dry, and it dropped down deep into my soul. 
I had a new nature, and an appetite growing for God. I be- 
lieve that is what people want, an appetite for spiritual things. 

In India they believe that swans are sacred birds and come 
down from heaven. They have a legend that a swan once came 
down and lighted near an old crane that was looking for snails. 
The crane stretched out its neck, and said : 

" Where did you come from ? " 

" I came from heaven." 

" Heaven — I never heard of that. Is it far away? " 

" Very far away." 

" Is it a good country ? " 

" Oh, yes." 

" Is it as good as this ? " 

" Oh, yes, far better." 

And the swan told about the lakes and the rivers, and the 
fountains, and the flowers, and the crane stood there listening. 

" Are there any snails there? " said the crane. 

And the swan drew itself up and indignantly answered : 

" No, they wouldn't have the vile things there." 

" You may keep your heaven," said the crane, " I want 
snails." 



CONTENT IN DEGRADATION. 



157 



Listen. There's a mighty truth wrapped up in that. Did 
you ever see a young man whose mother loves him with all 
her soul ? Her home is as beautiful as a bit of Paradise down 
in this world. He has a loving father and brothers and 
sisters. Yet, he frequents the slums and sinks lower and 
lower and lower, until he hangs around low groggeries, and 
cleans out spittoons for a drink of liquor. Tell him that his 
mother wants him to come home ; tell him how she loves him 
and yearns after him ; tell him what a welcome he will receive 
if he will only return ; but he turns a deaf ear to all entreaties 
and refuses to go back. He will give up his mother and his 
white-haired father, his reputation, his character, his soul, and 
his hope of Heaven, if someone will only give him whiskey. 
What's the trouble? He has got the "crane nature," he is 
content with snails. Put the swan nature into him, and he 
will gladly forsake his low haunts and evil habits. He will be- 
come a partaker of the divine nature. 

" Born again," " born of the Spirit," sounds very strange 
to some ears. How can these things be? A great many 
people say, " You must reason it out, but if you cannot reason 
it out, don't ask us to believe it." When you ask me to reason 
it out, I tell you frankly I can't do it. " The wind bloweth 
where it listeth, and you hear the sound thereof, but canst not 
tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth ; so is every one that 
is born of the Spirit." I don't understand all about the wind. 
It may blow due north here, and due south somewhere else. I 
may go up a few hundred feet and find it blowing in an entirely 
opposite direction from what it is blowing down here. You 
ask me to explain these currents of wind, but because I can't 
explain it and because I don't understand it, suppose I assert, 
" Oh, humph ! there is no such thing as wind." You might just 
as well tell me that there is no wind as to tell me there is no such 
thing as a man born of the Spirit. I have felt the Spirit of God 
working in my heart just as much as I have felt the wind blow- 
ing in my face. I can't reason it out. There are a great many 
things I can't reason out that I believe. I never could reason 



158 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE. 

out the Creation. I can see the world, but I can't tell how 
God made it out of nothing. 

A party of young men were going to the country, and on 
their journey they made up their minds not to believe anything 
they could not reason out. An old man heard them, and 
presently he said : 

" I heard you say you would not believe anything you could 
not reason out." 

" Yes," they replied, " that is so." 

" Well," he said, " coming down on the train to-day, I 
noticed some geese, some sheep, some swine, and some cattle, 
all eating grass. Can you tell me by what process that same 
grass was turned into hair, bristles, feathers, and wool ? Do 
you believe it is a fact ? " 

" Oh, yes," they said, " we can't help believing that, though 
we fail to understand it." 

" Well," said the old man, " I can't help believing in Jesus 
Christ." 

I can't help believing in the regeneration of man when I see 
men that have been reclaimed. 

There is no mystery about death, but there is always mys- 
tery about life. Just think of a little seed planted in the ground, 
and out of that comes forth the sweetness and fragrance of the 
beautiful flower. Then look at the different forms of the differ- 
ent flowers ; look at the rose, the lily, and other flowers ; look 
at the different colors ; there is mystery about that life. It is 
wonderful to see a tree three hundred feet high, and the sap 
running up to its top and giving life to its branches. When 
there is so great a mystery about the life of a flower or a tree, 
do you suppose there is no mystery about this new spiritual 
life ? A good many men say, " I won't have anything to do 
with it because I can't understand the mystery." Why don't 
you throw away your natural life? There is a good deal of 
mystery about this body that you can't understand. I am con- 
scious of my body, but I can't understand its life. So there 
are a good many things about this new life that I can't under- 



A DESPERATE CASE. ^9 

stand, but I believe I have a new life as distinct from animal 
life as light is from darkness. 

I was once preaching in the North of England, and one 
afternoon a lady said : 

" Mr. Moody, my nephew has promised to come and hear 
you preach, on condition that I shall never ask him to come to 
another religious meeting as long as he lives. If you don't 
reach him now, I think he will never be reached." 

The young man was a graduate of Cambridge. His father, 
a man of moderate means, had made great sacrifices to educate 
his son. He was a young man of great promise when he went 
to college, but while there he became a confirmed drunkard. 
His father and mother went to their graves broken-hearted. 
The young man went from bad to worse, until all his friends 
had given him up. His aunt said : 

" He does not believe in the Gospel you preach, but he has 
made me promise never to ask him to go to another meeting as 
long as he- lives. Won't you preach right at him, and at the 
conclusion come to the pew and talk with him? He has had 
the delirium tremens already, and I fear one more attack would 
kill him. He is near to death. Won't you come to the pew 
and talk with him ? " 

" If I go to see him," I said, " I shall have to go over the 
backs of the pews ; everybody will be looking, and that will 
make him angry." 

" Well," she said, " it is a desperate case, and I want you 
to promise." 

You know how it is with these godly women, — they see 
a thing and they don't see the pitfalls in the way. No argu- 
ment would turn her away. To pacify her, I said : 

" I will try to have an interview with him." 

When I first entered the pulpit I didn't see him, but on 
looking around later, I discovered that his aunt had got him 
at the inner end of the pew, and she sat by the pew door to keep 
him in until I could get to him. 

While I was preaching I could see his brows knit. I 



!5o EVADING THE PREACHER. 

fancied he was saying, " Moody isn't going to catch me." But 
I could see that his aunt was praying. When I got through 
his brow was knit more than ever. I didn't know how to get 
at him unless I went over the backs of the pews. She stood up 
talking with some one in the aisle, with her back to him, to 
keep him in the pew till I got there. I started. He saw me 
aiming towards him. He didn't want to be rude and push by 
his aunt, but he concluded that if I could go over the backs of 
the pews he could do the same, and so he did. When I got 
there the aunt turned to introduce me, and lo ! he was gone. 
She sat down and cried as if her heart would break. I said : 

" We can reach him." 

"How?" 

" By the way of the Throne." 

I get a good deal of comfort out of the fact that I can talk 
to God and a man can't help himself. Many a man has been 
saved in spite of all the powers of hell and darkness, in answer 
to the prayers of some godly, sainted wife or mother. Never 
give a man up. You can pray for a man if he will not let you 
talk with him. 

We prayed for this young man. I left England, but re- 
turned to that same town some eight years later. About that 
time a lady wrote me that a brother of hers had been saved from 
drunkenness after she had spent eighteen years in praying for 
him. She wrote me about it, and told me to tell others never 
to give up. The letter was well written. I thought it would 
touch some one's heart, and I read it in a meeting in that town. 
.When the meeting was over a fine-looking man came up 
and said : 

" Did you say that man was in America? " 

" Yes, sir. Why? Did you doubt what was stated? " 

" No, I could not doubt it ; but I thought it was myself until 
you mentioned America." 

" What ! Were you ever a hard drinker? " 

" Yes, sir." 

" How long since you gave it up ? " 



"WITH GOD ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE." ^ 

" Seven years. Do you remember a lady who made you 
promise to come and talk to her nephew, and the man jumped 
over the backs of the pews ? " 

I had forgotten it, but I remembered it then, and said : 

" Yes, I do." 

" Well, I am that nephew." 

"You are? You don't look like him." God had "re- 
stored His image " in him. Said I : 

" Would you tell me about it? " 

" Well," he said, " I drank harder that ever for a year after 
that. I had a good many jokes at your expense in the public 
houses, telling how I had ' fooled ' Moody. But seven years 
ago this month I was in London on business, and one night as 
I sat in my lodgings with my feet on the table and a meer- 
schaum pipe in my mouth, my thoughts turned in upon myself. 
I said to myself, ' Richardson, you ought to be a different man.' 
1 Yes, I know it. But I never shall be.' ' You ought to give 
up drink.' ' Yes, I know it ; but if I could have done it for any- 
body I would have for my father, and he could not keep me, 
nor my mother. They are dead and gone. I don't care what 
becomes of me. The sooner I am dead the better. Every 
friend has cast me off. I can't break away from this habit. It 
is impossible.' And then the thought came to me, ' With God 
all things are possible.' And I fell on my knees and cried to 
God, ' All things are possible with Thee ! Save me ! ' 

He went out and tried to find a minister, but could find 
none. He came back and prayed again. And then he got a 
Bible and read. He grew sleepy, and the thought came that 
he would wake up the next morning and think it was only " the 
blues," and all would pass off, and he would drink more. He 
tried to keep awake. But he still grew sleepy, and he knelt 
down and prayed again. He fell asleep for a few hours and 
woke up, and never felt so badly in his life. Then he fell on his 
knees and thanked God He hadn't left him, and he felt no de- 
sire to take the pipe into his mouth. Every morning, when he 
had dressed, his first thing was to " liquor up " for the day. 



l62 AN EARNEST WORKER. 

But that morning the appetite didn't come back. That was 
seven years that month. " And," he said, " it has never re- 
turned." 

When the man had gone out I said to a prominent man : 

'' Do you know him? " 

" Yes, he is one of the leading lawyers of London." 

" Do you know anything else about him ? " 

" Why, yes ! He is a member of the same church that I 
am a member of." 

" Do you know anything about his experience? " 

'' No, sir, I only know that he was a great drunkard." 

" Do you know of his doing anything in Christ's king- 
dom? " 

" Oh, yes. He is a great worker in our church ; he has a 
Bible class of a hundred young men." 

"You never heard him tell his experience?" 

" No, sir ! he never refers to it." 

I sent for him and he came to see me. Said I : 

" Will you go down to the meeting and tell three thousand 
men what God has done for you? " 

His lip quivered, as he answered : 

" I have three little children, and I don't want them to know 
what their father was." 

" Wouldn't you go to help a man if he was down in the pit ? " 
said I. 

" I would be the happiest, man on earth to do so," he said. 

I sent invitations into every public house in that city. I 
had the meeting thoroughly advertised. There was a great 
demand for tickets. I suppose that among the three thousand 
men who were present nearly one thousand were hard drinkers. 
I have heard the great orators of my day, and I think I know 
what it is to see an audience moved ; but I don't know that I 
have ever seen an audience moved as that audience was, as that 
clean-looking man, with the stamp of nobleness on his face, 
stood there and told them how he went down step by step, how 
he stood at his father's grave and took a solemn pledge never 



A THRILLING TESTIMONY. 



163 



to drink again, and in forty-eight hours was drunk. He told 
them how his mother died, and how he sunk lower and lower, 
and gave up all hope until that memorable day when he heard 
that voice and prayed to heaven, " All things are possible with 
God." He said : 

" Gentlemen, I have never touched tobacco or drink from 
that hour, and the appetite has never once come back." 

I believe God Almighty put strength in him then and there. 
I haven't any doubt about it. His testimony thrilled that 
audience. I didn't have to ask anybody to stand. Men who 
had been slaves to drink for years were freed. He went with 
me to Glasgow, to Edinburgh, to London, and I believe hun- 
dreds, if not thousands, were saved through his testimony. I 
believe that God will put strength into every man, however 
fallen, if they will let Him. If they become partakers of God's 
nature, He will break the fetters and set them free. And this 
is what this lost world wants to know. " Except a man be 
born again," born of the Spirit, — born from above, " he can- 
not see the kingdom of God." Keep that in mind. 

On the Pacific slope one can see gigantic trees that have 
been growing since the time of Moses. But there is one thing 
you will never see unless you are born again, and that is the 
tree that grows in the Paradise of God. You may go to Paris, 
to London, to Rome, but the city that Abraham saw, whose 
builder and maker is God, you will never see unless you are 
born of God. You may see the Princes of Germany, of Italy, 
and of England. But the Prince of Peace you will never see 
unless you are born again That city with pearly gates and 
jasper walls, and the streets paved with transparent gold, you 
will never see unless you are born again. You may look into 
the face of your godly wife, your saintly mother ; but the time 
is coming when, unless you are born again, there will be a 
separation, and you will never see them again. Can you 
afford to be deceived? Some of you have lost sweet and dear 
children that you will never again see unless you are born of 
the Spirit. 



x 64 A DYING MAN'S APPEAL. 

Perhaps some of you may ask, " How can we be born 
again ? " Listen. Christ not only told Nicodemus that he 
must be born again, but He told him the means. What was it? 
" And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even 
so must the Son of man be lifted up : That whosoever be- 
lieveth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." 

I don't care how far down you have gone nor how deep the 
pit into which you have fallen, He can lift you up and transform 
you, as we know from the third chapter of John. I want to 
tell you how I read that chapter one night, when it sounded 
sweeter than ever it did before. I was in the army of General 
Grant. After the terrible battle of Pittsburgh Landing I was 
in a hospital at Murfreesboro looking after the wounded and 
dying. I had been up two nights and was so utterly ex- 
hausted that I almost went to sleep while walking around 
among the cots of the wounded soldiers, and I was obliged to 
take a little rest. Just as I had fallen asleep in the middle of 
the night a soldier woke me up and said that a man in a cer- 
tain ward wanted to see me. 

" Well," I said, " I will see him in the morning." 

" But," he said, " he will be dead in the morning; if you 
want to see him you must come now." 

So I went with him, and he led me to the wounded man's 
cot. The dying soldier said : 

" Chaplain, I want you to help me die." 

" My dear friend," I said, " I would take you right up in my 
arms and carry you into the kingdom of God if I could ; but I 
cannot do it ; I cannot help you die." 

" But, Chaplain, can't you help me see the way ; it is hard to 
die all alone." 

I tell you that is when we want help. I told him about 
Jesus Christ ; but he shook his head and said : 

" He won't help me, because I have been fighting against 
Him all my life." 

He said that when he told his mother he had enlisted she 
said: 



HELP ME TO DIE. 



165 



" I could give you up and let you go if you were only a 
Christian ; but the thought that you may be cut down and die 
without Christ is terrible to me." 

" I told mother that when the war was over I would become 
a Christian." ' But,' said she, ' You may never live to see this 
war over ' ; and now I have got to die, and I never shall see her 
again. Can't you help me ? " 

" I will do all I can," I said. 

I took my Bible and read the promises to him, but I 
couldn't get him to believe that one of those promises was for 
him. 

I saw that his life was fast slipping away, and I couldn't 
bear to have him die in that condition ; so I lifted my heart to 
God for direction. Then I turned to the third chapter of 
John, and said : 

" I am going to read a conversation that Christ had with a 
man who went to Him in your state of mind." So I began : 
" There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler 
of the Jews : The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto 
him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God : 
for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God 
be with him." 

The dying man's eyes were riveted upon me, as he eagerly 
listened to every word that fell from my lips, and when I got 
to the fourteenth verse and read, " And as Moses lifted up the 
serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be 
lifted up : That Whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, 
but have eternal life," he cried : 

"Stop, is that there?" 

" Yes," I said, " it is right here." 

" Read that again, will you? " 

I read it slowly and carefully that he might hear every word : 
" As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must 
the Son of man be lifted up : That whosoever believeth in Him 
should not perish, but have eternal life." Then he said : 

" That helps." 



iSfi THE DAWN OF A NEW LIFE. 

" Well," I said, " bless God for that ! " 

" It sounds good, Chaplain, read it to me once more," he 
said. 

And I read it again. A radiant smile came over his face, 
and it seemed as if a new life had dawned upon him. When 
I had finished the chapter, I sat quietly beside him for some 
time. I noticed that his lips were moving, and I thought per- 
haps he was trying to pray. I bent over him and I could hear 
him faintly whisper, " That whosoever believeth in Him should 
not perish, but have eternal life." Then he opened his eyes, 
fixed a calm, resigned look upon me and said : 

" Chaplain, you needn't read to me any more ; it is enough ; 
Jesus Christ was lifted up in my place. I am not alone now." 

After I had prayed with him and made him as comfortable 
as possible, I left him for the night. The next morning I 
hastened back to the ward. The cot was empty. I asked the 
nurse : 

" Did you stay with him till he died ? " 

" Yes." 

" Tell me how he died? " 

" Why," said she, " he kept repeating those verses over and 
over again, and just as he breathed his last I heard him say, 
' As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must 
the Son of man be lifted up ! ' " 

I thank God for the third chapter of John ! I think it is the 
most precious thing in all the world. 



CHAPTER IV. 

SEEKING CHRIST AND FOLLOWING HIM. 

Faithful, Anxious, and Curious Followers — The Man Who Came to 
See the Chairs — "I Thought You Were a Humbug " — A Start- 
ling Question — "Do You Know That Man?" — Reward of Ten 
Thousand Dollars for a Lost Diamond — Crawling Under the 
Chairs — Jumping from the Gallery — " You Are Just the Man " — 
Mr. Moody's Condition When He Arrived in Boston as a Boy — 
Crying Unto God in His Extremity — "Moody, I Don't Like 
Your Style " — Personal Reminiscences of the Burning of 
Chicago — A Night of Horror — An Indignant Woman — " None 
of Your Business, Sir " — " Where is Mary? " — The Man Who 
Ran up Behind Mr. Moody — A Visit to the New York Tombs — 
"Talk to the Other Man; I'm All Right " — An Astonished Pris- 
oner — A Dry Goods Box for a Pulpit — The Man Who Pre- 
tended He Wasn't Listening. 

I WANT to call your attention to three things. One is a 
question, the second- is an exhortation, and the third is 
a command. 

In the first chapter of John we find this question, " What 
seek ye? " These are the first words that fell from the lips of 
the Son of God as recorded by John; they might have been 
the first words that John ever heard Him utter. It was about 
four o'clock in the afternoon that John the Baptist stood with 
two of his disciples and saw Jesus at a little distance and said, 
" Behold the Lamb of God! " These two disciples left their 
master and followed Christ. When Jesus turned and saw 
them following, He said to them, "What seek ye?" They 
answered, " Rabbi, where dwellest Thou? " He said, " Come 
and see." They went, and they were so impressed by that 
interview that they never left Him; they became His fast 
friends, and all through His ministry they followed Him. 
They followed Him to the cross; they were witnesses of His 

(167) 



j58 interested motives. 

crucifixion; they went to Bethany and saw Him ascend into 
the heavens, and the clouds receive Him out of their sight; 
and it is supposed that one of them went to a martyr's crown. 

It is very evident that John and Andrew found in Christ 
what a good many men did not find in that day, because in 
one place we read that many of His disciples went back and 
walked no more with Him. It looked to them as if Christ 
wasn't all that He claimed to be; they seemed to be disap- 
pointed. It makes all the difference in the world what men 
follow Christ for. If a man follows Christ for what he can 
get, he will be disappointed ; but if he follows Christ for what 
He is, he never will be disappointed. 

When Christ was on earth, all classes of people followed 
Him, and for all kinds of motives, until one day He turned 
around to them and said, " Ye seek Me, not because ye saw 
the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves and were 
filled." That was what they wanted, loaves and fishes. I 
suppose some of the neighbors told them how He fed five 
thousand people a few days before, in the desert, with five 
little barley loaves and two small fishes, and when they got 
through they had twelve basketfuls left, a good deal more than 
they began with. That excited the curiosity of a good many 
people, and they rushed into the desert in hopes He would 
make some more bread. I can imagine one man touching 
another on the elbow and saying: 

" Do you think He will make any bread to-day? " 

" I don't know." 

" Did you taste of the bread He made the other day? " 

" Yes, I had some." 

"How did it taste?" 

" I never tasted better bread in my life." 

"How did the fish taste?" 

" I never tasted better fish." 

" Well, I should like to taste some of that bread and fish 
myself." 

They were very anxious that He should make a few more 



DRAWN BY CURIOSITY. 



169 



loaves and fishes. They didn't care anything about the doc- 
trine He preached, but they would like to tell their grand- 
children that they had eaten bread that had never been baked, 
and fish that had never seen water. That was the height of 
their ambition. They didn't get anything from Christ; they 
were disappointed. 

There was another class that thought He was going to set 
up a temporal kingdom. They wanted office. The most 
popular man in the country is the newly inaugurated Presi- 
dent when he has a lot of offices to fill; but when the offices 
are all filled, he is not quite so popular. I suppose some of 
them thought if He should set up a temporal kingdom that 
they would be postmasters or something else. But when they 
found it was a spiritual kingdom, not a temporal kingdom, 
that He was to set up, they went back, and walked no more 
with Him. 

I was preaching in Philadelphia some years ago, and a man 
arose and said he hadn't been inside of a church for twenty 
years until the week before. A man had told him it was a 
marvelous building in which our meetings were held, and a 
strange sight to see eleven thousand empty chairs on the floor. 
He wanted to see eleven thousand empty chairs, and as soon 
as the hall-keeper opened the doors, in he came. After he had 
seen the chairs he was curious to learn what the people came 
for. That man wasn't hard to reach. He came within hear- 
ing of the Gospel and the word reached him the first thing. 
He came to see empty chairs, and he found a living Christ. 

We were once holding meetings in a city after an absence 
of eight years, and a man came up to me one day and said: 

" Mr. Moody, I want to thank you for leading me to 
Christ." And he gave me such a grip, as he shook hands, that 
I didn't gtt over it for about two hours. 

" I wish you would tell me all about it," I said. 

" Well, when you were last here I didn't believe in you at 
all; I thought you were a humbug, and I wouldn't go to hear 
you until you were having your last meeting down in the City 



l y Q A PERSONAL QUESTION. 

Hall, when a friend persuaded me, and I went just to please 
him. When I got there every seat was taken and I stood back 
by a post with my hands in my pockets. All at once you 
pointed down at me, and said, ' Young man, will you take 
eternal life to-night as a gift?' The question startled me. I 
took my hands out of my pockets, and the thought suddenly 
came to me that I would be a very stupid man if I didn't take 
eternal life as a gift; and I have been serving the Lord ever 
since." 

I said to a gentleman who was present: 

" Do you know that man? " 

" Yes, we consider him the brightest star from your work 
here eight years ago. If you remain here long enough you 
will find out what kind of a Christian he is." 

He came to all the meetings for a month, and got there 
before I did every time. He helped in the inquiry meetings, 
and would come in with his Bible under his arm, and the 
moment he found an unconverted man he would slip right into 
the seat and go to work for him. He came into a meeting 
without a thought of seeking Christ, but having found Him, 
he became an earnest worker in His cause. 

The exhortation is this : " Seek ye the Lord while He may 
be found, call ye upon Him while He is near." Notice that the 
text does not say seek health, seek happiness, seek peace, seek 
joy, — it says " Seek ye the Lord!' I don't find any place in 
the Bible where it says, seek the Lord with your head; it says 
seek with your heart, and when you seek with all your heart, 
you will find Him. 

I said to a man one day: 

" Well, my friend, are you a Christian? " 

" No, sir." 

"Would you like to be one?' 

" I don't object." 

" My friend, you will never be saved with that spirit." 

The poor fellow had been wondering why the Lord didn't 
save him. If you ever see the kingdom of God, you have got 



SEARCHING FOR A DIAMOND. 



171 



to be in dead earnest. Strive to enter in at the straight gate. 
If the kingdom of God is all it is represented to be it is worth 
seeking with all your heart. The Bible says, " In the day that 
ye shall search for Me with all your heart ye shall find Me." 
It does not take a seeking Saviour and an anxious sinner a 
great while to find each other. 

If salvation is what it is represented to be it is worth giving 
up everything else and giving your whole attention to it; it 
is worth letting business affairs and home duties go until this 
great question is settled. Suppose I should say to an audience 
that when I came into the building I had a very valuable dia- 
mond, and that I lost it somewhere in the building, and I would 
give to anyone who would find it ten thousand dollars if he 
would restore it to me inside of twenty-four hours. Why, you 
would see the most earnest crowd in the world. They 
wouldn't wait to hear another word; every one of them would 
begin to search in earnest. If a man in the gallery saw it on 
the floor below he would jump right down there; he wouldn't 
be particular about appearances either. If there was a chance 
to get ten thousand dollars they would stay there all night. 
After midnight, should some one ask them if their folks 
wouldn't worry about them they would say, " Let them 
worry." If I should say to one of them in the morning, " You 
had better go to breakfast," he would say, " Oh, no, Mr. 
Moody, I don't want any breakfast." If they thought there 
was one chance out of a hundred thousand of getting that ten 
thousand dollars they would stay there for the next twenty- 
four hours and creep all around the room on their hands and 
knees; they would crawl under the chairs and tables and hunt 
the floor all over. They wouldn't care what the papers might 
say; they wouldn't care anything about public opinion; not 
one of them would have to be waked up; they wouldn't go to 
sleep; they would be tremendously in earnest to get that ten 
thousand dollars. I tell you it would be the liveliest crowd 
you ever saw. If some of them had a hard time during the 
year, and they could find that ten thousand dollars, it would 



Ij2 TURNING ON THE LIGHT. 

give them a good lift. They would go without eating, drink- 
ing, and sleeping for the possible chance of getting that ten 
thousand dollars. 

Isn't eternal life worth more than ten thousand dollars? 
Isn't it worth more than one hundred "thousand? Isn't it 
worth more than all the wealth of the world? If you can get 
eternal life right now by just asking for it, isn't it the height 
of madness to go without it? You may have eternal life now 
if you will only seek it! Say that from this hour you will seek 
the kingdom of God; that you will not eat, drink, or sleep until 
this great question is settled. I never saw a man come to that 
decision who did not get into the kingdom very quickly. 

I met a man in Scotland many years ago, and I said to him: 

" Are you a Christian? " 

" No, but I am trying to become one." 

"What is the trouble?" 

" I don't know; when I got up this morning I prayed that 
I might be converted to-day. I haven't been to my business 
to-day; I spent the day in prayer, and I came here to-night 
determined I wouldn't go out of this church until the question 
was settled. Now the services are over, and I don't know 
why I am not a Christian. When I left home to-night I said 
I would not go back until I knew that I was converted; but 
I am not." 

" You are just the man," I said. " I will see if the Bible 
won't turn the light on here." I took my Bible and showed 
him the way, and it didn't take him long to get into the 
kingdom. 

Those men on the day of Pentecost got in pretty quick, 
didn't they? They just cried out, " Men and brethren, what 
must we do to be saved? " They were wide awake. I be- 
lieve if every man and woman will seek the kingdom of God 
first, they shall not want; I believe God will take care of our 
temporal affairs very quickly. 

When I first went to Boston I was what you might call a 
tramp; I was in that city without a place to lay my head; my 



THE DANGER OF DELAY. 



173 



money was all gone, and in my extremity I cried unto God on 
the streets; I promised that I would serve Him. And I had 
work inside of an hour. I have never known what it was to 
want from that day to this. I have had plenty of work right 
along. I pity a man that has nothing to do, even if he is worth 
his millions. Seek the kingdom of God first, and you will 
have plenty to do; no fiction about that. 

A man once told me that he " would consider it." If I 
should tell my boy to go and get a glass of water and he should 
say, " I will consider it," I think I would have something f 
say to him. When God says, " Seek ye first the kingdom of 
God," and a man says, " I will consider it," what do you think 
of that man? I will consider it! What a piece of imperti- 
nence to Almighty God! I tell you if you want prosperity, just 
take that command and obey it to the letter. Make up your 
mind that, cost what it will, you are going to have the king- 
dom of God first. 

A man said to me some time ago : " Moody, I don't like 
your style of preaching." 

"Why not?" 

" You always try to get the people to act at once. Why 
don't you give them time to meditate and consider? " 

" Well, my friend," I said, " I once gave an audience a 
week to decide what they would do with Jesus Christ. I would 
thrust my arm into the fire before I would do that again. I 
would not dare to give an audience a week or even an hour. I 
don't know what may happen in an hour." 

I remember preaching in Chicago on five consecutive Sun- 
day nights on the life of Christ. On the fifth night I had got 
Him into the hands of Pilate, and Pilate was like a good many 
people, perplexed, not knowing what to do with Christ. I 
had taken the familiar text, " What shall I do with Jesus, who 
is called Christ? " After I had preached as strong a sermon 
as I could I said to the audience, — and it was about as big a 
blunder as I ever made in all my life — "I want you to take 
this question home and consider it, and next Sunday night I 



74 



FLEEING BEFORE THE FIRE. 



want you to go to Calvary with me, and there, under the cross, 
we will settle what to do with Jesus Christ." 

Just then the great city bell, only a block away, rang out 
an alarm of fire. That was nothing in those days, and I paid 
no attention to it. But the alarm continued, and while the 
bell was ringing out a general alarm, Mr. Sankey closed the 
meeting by singing " To-day the Saviour calls." The last 
verse rang through the hall, 

" To-day the Saviour calls, 
For refuge fly; 
The storm of vengeance falls, 
For death is nigh." 

It seemed afterwards as if that verse was prophetic. We 
held an inquiry-meeting, but not many remained. How could 
we expect it when I had given them a week to decide what 
to do with Jesus? After the inquiry-meeting we started for 
home. As soon as I started I found that the city was doomed; 
even the clapboards of the building we were in were falling, 
and the burning shingles were dropping down. The fire was 
breaking out all around me. It was a very serious question 
whether I could get home to my wife and children and get 
them to a place of safety. When I got them out of bed, flames 
thirty feet high were following me, and before midnight the 
hall where I preached that sermon was in ashes; before two 
o'clock the church where I worshiped was in ashes; before 
three o'clock the house that I lived in was in ashes. Before 
daybreak next morning one hundred thousand people were 
burned out of house and home. It seemed to me that I had a 
glimpse in that fire of what the Day of Judgment will be, when 
I saw flames rolling down the streets, twenty and thirty feet 
high, consuming everything in its march that did not flee. I 
saw there the millionaire and the beggar fleeing alike. There 
was no difference. That night great men, learned men, wise 
men, all fled alike. There was no difference. And when God 
comes to judge the world there will be no difference. 

No one knows exactly how many perished in the flames 



A RUDE ANSWER. \j$ 

that awful night. It was estimated that a thousand people 
were burned alive; and right around that hall a good many 
perished. I have reason to believe that some who heard 
me were in eternity before midnight. That was in 1871. 
I shall never meet that audience again, and I had given them 
a whole week to decide what to do with Jesus. 

In England, the first time I went there, as I descended from 
the pulpit one day, a lady stood near, and as I passed her on 
my way to the inquiry-room I said to her: 

"Madam, are you a Christian?" Her eyes snapped, and 
she said: 

" None of your business, sir." 

I thought I had made a fool of myself, and would have gone 
back and made an humble apology if I dared. To my great 
joy and delight she was back at the next meeting, but I didn't 
go near her. She was there every day for a week. It was 
Sunday afternoon when I spoke to her. 

The next Sunday afternoon I preached on " Behold the 
Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world." When 
I was part way through, I said, " If there is anyone in the 
audience who wants God to take away his sin, he need not 
wait till I am through the sermon, but he can bow his head 
and say, ' O Lamb of God, take away my sin,' and He will do 
it." I saw that lady bow her head. When the inquirers 
were invited to go into the chapel, back of the pulpit, I met her 
and she held out her hand and said: 

" Mr. Moody, I want you to forgive me for being so un- 
lady-like last Sunday." 

" My friend, I want you to forgive me. I didn't intend to 
offend you," I said. 

" Oh, but I am so glad you spoke to me as you did. I have 
had a hard week of it." 

*' Why don't you ask God to forgive you, and have the 
question settled? " 

" Oh," she said, " I am forgiven. I am a Christian." 

I thought that was strange, and I asked: 



176 



A HAPPY WOMAN. 



" How long have you been a Christian? " 

" About fifteen minutes." 

" Did you become a Christian to-day?" 

" Yes, sir. Don't you remember saying if any one wants 
to become a Christian, if he will just bow the head and say 
from the heart ' O Lamb of God, take away my sins,' it would 
be done? Didn't you mean it and believe it? " 

" Yes, certainly." 

" Well, I took you at your word. I have not had any peace 
for a week; and it seemed as if I could not carry the burden 
any longer. And when you said that I just bowed my head 
and cried, ' O Lamb of God, take away my sins,' and I be- 
lieve I have been converted." 

I thought I would test her. And so I said: 

" Will you go and talk to that factory girl?" indicating a 
girl fourteen or fifteen years old. 

That wealthy lady went and sat down by the side of the 
poor factory girl, and in about an hour I saw her get down on 
her knees and pray with her; and the girl went out, wiping 
away her tears, and with the light of heaven shining from her 
eyes. Then the lady came to me and said: 

" Mr. Moody, I believe I am the happiest person on earth. 
To think that I am not only forgiven, but have been used to 
help that girl ! Can't I come here to-night to the inquiry-meet- 
ing and try to find some other poor person and help her? " 

In the next few weeks I believe she led more persons to 
Christ than any other worker. She brought her friends in one 
after another, and in a few months the news came to me that 
thirty or forty had been led to Christ through her influence. 
When I returned to America about two years after, the first 
letter I received from England had a black border, and it told 
me she had gone home. But, from the time she bowed her 
head that afternoon and said, ' O Lamb of God, take away 
my sins," she seemed to be pressing right towards the mark. 
Friends, it is that simply. You need not wait for anyone to 
ask you to come to Christ. Christ asks you now. 



"I WASN'T LOST. 



77 



The reason why so few come to Him is because so few be- 
lieve they are lost. A lady came to a crowded meeting, bring- 
ing her little girl, and somehow they got separated; and after 
the mother had failed to find her, the matter was reported at 
the pulpit, and they went to work to find the child. The 
minister called out: 

"Where is Mary? Mary! Mary!" 

But the little girl did not answer. They looked all over the 
house, but no trace of her could be found, and the mother be- 
came almost frantic. Then the bell-ringer was called out, and 
he went through the streets crying: 

"Child lost! Child lost!" 

When the meeting was over they found the little girl sitting 
on the front seat, and some one said to her: 

" Why, Mary, why didn't you speak out when they called 
your name? " 

"Why," said Mary, " I wasn't lost! " 

You laugh at her, and you laugh at yourselves. A great 
many are lost and they don't know it. 

Lost! Do you know what it means? Do you know what 
it is to be without hope and without God in the world? One 
evening as I was going home I heard a man running up be- 
hind me. I turned and was accosted by one who said: 

" Sir, I just passed two ladies, and I heard one of them say, 
' That is Mr. Moody/ Are you Mr. Moody? " 

" Yes, sir." 

" I want you to pray for me. I want you to intercede with 
Christ for my lost soul. I am without God and without hope 
in this world." 

Thank God, there was a man who had been waked up. He 
realized that he was lost. 

Some years ago a young man in Brooklyn was spiritually 
awakened, and he said that night after night as he went home 
after a debauch and saw his mother's portrait hanging on the 
wall it seemed as if her eyes would pierce his inmost soul. At 
last he could bear it no longer, and he turned the picture 



^8 INNOCENT PRISONERS. 

toward the wall. The Son of man was seeking that young 
man through the face of his mother. 

During the Civil War I came from Grant's army to the city 
of New York, and I went into the Fulton Street prayer-meet- 
ing. After the service a gentleman wanted to know if I would 
preach to the prisoners in the Tombs. I said I would. I sup- 
posed they would all be brought out of their cells into the 
chapel; but when I arrived I found, to my dismay, that I had 
got to preach to the prisoners in their cells. There were three 
or four tiers of cells, one right over the other, and I had to 
stand and talk to them in a long passageway. It is curious 
work to preach to people whom you cannot see. I confess I 
like to look at my audience while I am talking. When I got 
through I had great curiosity to see how they received my 
message. I went to a little window in the first cell, just a small 
opening without glass, and I could talk through it. Two men 
were in the cell playing cards; I suppose they had been play- 
ing all through the preaching. 

" How is it that you are here? " I said. 

One of them spoke up and said: 

" Well, chaplain, we don't want you to get the idea that 
we have done anything wrong; the fact is, we got into bad 
company, and we were arrested because we were with bad 
men." 

I said to myself, " I won't spend my time on these men," 
and I went along to the next. 

" How is it that you are here?" 

" Well, stranger, the man that did the deed looked exactly 
like me, and so they arrested me instead of the guilty man. I 
shall get out when I have a chance to explain." 

Another innocent man! So I went along to the next. 

" How is it that you are here? " 

" Oh, I am all right; talk to that other man; I am all right." 

So I went along to the next. 

" How is it that you are here? 

" Well, you see, they got a false witness to go into court 



ONE REPENTANT SINNER. 



179 



and swear to a lie; that is what brought me here; I am per- 
fectly innocent, and I am going to prosecute him when I get 
out." 

Another innocent man! So I went along to the next. 

" How is it that you are here? " 

" I am unjustly accused; I am going to have a trial this 
week, when I will establish my innocence, then I shall be out 
of prison." 

And so I went around among the cells. There were be- 
tween three and four hundred prisoners, and I never found 
so many innocent men in my life in one day as I did there; I 
never saw so many men justifying themselves. I said, I will 
see if I can find a sinner in the whole crowd. 

Human nature doesn't change one bit by putting it under 
lock and key. I continued my rounds among the cells, and 
when I was almost through I found a poor fellow in one of 
them with his face resting on his arm, and the tears running 
down his cheeks. 

" How is it that you are here?" 

He looked up and said with a sob: 

" My sins are more than I can bear." 

" Well," I said, " thank God for that. You are the man 
I have been looking for." 

" Why have you been looking for me; do you know me? " 

" I never saw you before in my life ; but you are the man 
I have been looking for." 

" Why," he said, " you must be the man who preached to 
us this morning! " 

" Yes, sir, I am." 

" Do you say you are glad my sins are more than I can 
bear? I thought you were a friend?" 

" Yes, sir, I am." 

" How do you make it out? " 

" If your sins are more than you can bear, you will be glad 
to cast them on One who can bear them for you," I replied. 

" I don't understand it," he said. 



180 A CONVICT'S PRAYER. 

" Well, I have been going all through this prison trying to 
find a man that was lost." 

I stood there for half an hour talking with him. It was 
like finding a cup of cold water in the desert to find in all that 
prison one man who knew he was lost and wanted to be saved. 
I told him how Christ came " to seek and to save that which 
was lost." After I had talked with him I said: 

" Let us pray." 

He got down on his knees on the inside of the cell, and I 
knelt down on the outside. I said: 

" You pray." 

" Oh, you don't know how wicked I am; it would be 
mockery for me to pray." 

" If you want mercy, ask for it," I said. 

He couldn't raise his head; but he managed to cry out: 

" God be merciful to me, a vile wretch! " 

When I rose from my knees I put my hand through the 
little window, and as he took it a hot tear fell upon it. I said 
to him: 

" I will meet you at the mercy seat at nine o'clock to-night." 

That night I had so much liberty in prayer I felt as if I 
could not go away without seeing him again. The next morn- 
ing I went to the Tombs and persuaded the officers to let me 
visit him in his cell. The moment he saw me he grasped my 
hand and said: 

" Mr. Moody, I want to thank you; but I never can thank 
you enough in time or eternity." Then he went on to tell me 
what peace and joy had come into his soul. He said : 

" When I was put into this prison I thought I never could 
face my friends again; now I thank God I was brought into 
this cell; if I hadn't been brought here I should not have been 
saved." 

" Tell me about it," I said. 

" Well," he replied, " I don't know just what time it was 
when the Lord came in here, arid I can't tell just how He 
came; but I was on my face crying to God for mercy, and it 



THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM. !8l 

seemed as if Jesus Christ came right into this cell and said to 
me, ' Your sins, which are many, are forgiven.' I think I am 
the happiest man in the whole State of New York." 

Can you tell me why the Son of man passed by one cell after 
another until He found that one cell and went in there ? It was 
because He found there one who was lost, and the Son of man 
came " to seek and to save that which was lost." 

I once heard of a lady who was exercised about her soul. 
She dreamed she was in a dark, deep pit from which she was 
trying to escape. She would climb up and slip back, and at 
last she said, " I am lost! " She lay down in the pit to die, 
and that moment she looked up at the mouth of the pit and 
saw a star shining in all its beauty and glory, and it seemed to 
lift her up out of herself, and out of the pit. She was rejoicing 
that she was to be lifted out of the pit, but she looked at her- 
self and said, " I am just the same," and dropped back. Then 
she fixed her eyes on the star again and she rose higher and 
higher and higher, until she got clear out of the pit; and when 
her feet rested on the rocks above she shouted with joy and 
awoke to find it was only a dream. " But," she said, " I 
learned a lesson." She found that if she was ever to get out 
of the pit of sin she must keep her eyes fixed on the star of 
Bethlehem. 

When I see a poor drunkard, when I see a thief, when I 
see a prisoner, it is a grand, a glorious thing to proclaim the 
Gospel to him, because I know he can be saved. A prison 
chaplain once told me of a scene that occurred in prison. The 
commissioners went to the Governor of the State and asked 
his consent to pardon five men for good behavior. The Gov- 
ernor consented, with the understanding that the record was 
to be kept secret, and at the end of six months the five men 
standing highest on the roll should be pardoned. At the end 
of six months the men were gathered in the chapel, the roll 
was called, and the president of the commission spoke to them. 
Then, putting his hand in his pocket, he drew out the papers, 
and said to those convicts: 



1 82 A BEWILDERED MAN. 

" I hold in my hand pardons for five men." 
Every man held his breath, and the place was as silent as 
the grave. Then the commissioner began to tell why the 
Governor had given these pardons; but the suspense was so 
great that the chaplain spoke to the commissioner and told 
him to read the names of those pardoned before he spoke 
further. The first name read was that of Reuben Johnson. 
" Reuben Johnson will come and get his pardon." 
He held out the paper, but no one came. He looked all 
around, expecting to see a man spring to his feet; still no one 
arose, and he turned to the officer of the prison and said: 
" Are all the convicts here? " 
"Yes," was the reply. Again he called: 
" Reuben Johnson will come and get his pardon." 
The real Reuben Johnson was all the time looking around 
to see where Reuben was; and the chaplain beckoned to him, 
and he again turned and looked around and behind him, think- 
ing some other man must be meant. A second time he beck- 
oned to Reuben, and called to him, and a third time the man 
looked around to see where Reuben was. At last the chap- 
lain said to him: 

''' You are the man, Reuben ; " and the poor fellow got up 
out of his seat and sank back again, thinking it could not be 
true. 

He had been in prison for nineteen years, and was under 
a life sentence. At last he came forward, trembling from head 
to foot, and looked at the pardon as if he could hardly believe 
his eyes; he went back to his seat, buried his face in his hands, 
and wept like a child. Reuben had been so long in the habit 
of falling into line and taking the lock-step with the rest that 
when the convicts were marched back to their cells he fell into 
his place, and the chaplain had to say: 

"Reuben, come out; you are a free man." 
That is the way men sometimes work out their pardon — 
by good behavior; but the Gospel of Jesus Christ is offered to 
all that have sinned and are not worthy. 



PREACHING IN THE STREET. 



•83 



" But," some say, " I have tried to find Christ and failed." 
Of course you will fail as long as you try to save yourself. 
During the Civil War I received an invitation to go into a 
country town and preach. I was very busy at the time and 
couldn't go for some weeks after; but there came a day when I 
could go, and I went to the town and called on the minister 
who had invited me. He said : 

" That letter was written weeks ago, but you did not come 
when requested, and now it is too late, the hall is otherwise 
engaged." 

" Well," I said, " we can go into the street and preach the 
Gospel there." 

I tell you, my dear friends, nearly every sermon that Christ 
preached was out in the open air. He preached on the moun- 
tain side, and on the sea, and in the fields. I tried every way 
I could to get the church people to go into the street with me, 
but I couldn't; then I said I would try to get the sinners. 
When the hour came I stood upon a drygoods box and 
preached the best I could. You never saw a colder crowd in 
your life ; there were a lot of young men sneaking around the 
outside, afraid some one would laugh at them ; they wanted 
people to understand that they were not interested. 

After I had been there a few nights a gentleman drove up 
one evening while I was preaching. He had a fine turnout, a 
magnificent horse, a silk hat on one side of his head, and a 
big cigar sticking out of his mouth; he sat there until the ser- 
mon was over, and pretended that he wasn't listening, and then 
went away. To my great amazement, he was back again the 
next night, and by and by he came quite regularly. 

One night I noticed that his forehead itched. Did you ever 
see a man in a religious meeting have an itching forehead? A 
good many men consider it a sign of weakness to shed a tear 
in a religious meeting. I noticed that this man took off his 
hat and rubbed his forehead, and sometimes he managed to 
pass his fingers across his eyes. When the meeting was over, 
I said to one of the citizens: 



184 BETTER ANGRY THAN CARELESS. 

" Who is that man? He is interested." 

And the reply was: " You ought to have heard him make 
sport of you to-day; I never heard a man say such things in 
my life; if half the things he said about you are true you ought 
to be hanged. He will tell more vile stories than any one I 
know; he can't talk a minute without taking God's name in 
vain; and the habit is so strong that he swears when he doesn't 
know it." 

"Well," I said, " he is interested; I am sure of that; it is 
no sign that he is not interested because he abuses me; on the 
contrary, it is a pretty good sign that he is interested." 

I have known people to get so angry that they would talk 
as hard as they could against the preacher one night and be 
converted the next day. If you see a dozen dogs together and 
throw something at them, it is the dog that gets hit that goes 
off yelping. I said: 

"Where does he live?" 

He replied, " Don't go near him, he will only curse you." 

No man can curse you; you can bring curses down upon 
yourself, but you can't curse anyone else. I questioned a little 
further, and they told me a little more about him. They said 
he was the wealthiest man in that part of the country; he had a 
beautiful wife and seven children, but his influence was against 
everything that was good. 

I found out where he lived, and went to his house. He was 
just coming out of the front door, I said: 

" I believe this is Mr. ? " He turned around and 

said gruffly: 

" Yes; what do you want?" 

" I should like to ask you a question." 

"What is it?" 

" I am told that God has blessed you above all men in this 
part of the country; He has given you good health, great 
wealth, a good wife, and seven children; and yet it is said that 
all God has received from you is blasphemy and curses, and 
I would like to know why you treat Him in that way? " 



POWER OF A BAD HABIT. j8^ 

" Come in," he said. He led the way to the drawing-room, 
and we sat down. Then he began: 

" What you said is true, every word of it. Do you know, 
I had company last week, and my wife said she wanted the 
floor to open and let her out of sight because I kept on swear- 
ing, and I didn't know it. I have tried a hundred times to 
stop swearing, but the more I try the worse I swear, and I can't 
be saved." 

" I think you can." 

" You preachers don't know how we business men are 
tempted." 

" I am a business man myself," I said. This was just be- 
fore I went out of business. 

" Aren't you a minister? " 

" No." 

" Well, you don't know how men who are in the habit of 
swearing are tempted. I have sworn since I was a little boy, 
and the habit is so strong that I swear wi*en I don't know it; 
you don't know anything about it." 

" I am ashamed to tell you I know a good deal more about 
it than I wish I did. Of course you meet a good many men 
who know nothing about it by experience, but I am sorry to 
say I do." 

" Did you ever swear? " 

" Yes, I am ashamed to say I did." 

" How did you stop? " 

" I never stopped." 

" What, you don't swear now, do you? " 

" No, sir'" 

"Well," said he, " how did it come about?" 

" It stopped itself." 

" Well, how did you make it stop itself? " 

" I will tell you how to have it stop itself; if you will take 
Jesus Christ right into your heart you will never swear again 
as long as you live. One night I took Jesus Christ into my 
heart, and when I got up the next morning there was love in 



1 88 TRYING TO PRAY. 

my heart; I didn't feel like cursing; and as I walked through 
Boston Common it seemed as if the birds were singing for my 
benefit, and the sun shone brighter than it ever did. before; 
from that day to this I never have had a desire to swear." 

" I don't understand it," he said. 

" I know you don't understand it," I replied, " and that is 
why I came to see you; if God comes into your heart you will 
begin to praise Him and pray." 

" How can I get God to come into my heart? " 

" Ask Him; get down here and pray." 

He said he had never been on his knees in his life. He 
didn't know how to get down; his knees seemed to crack; it 
was the stiffest kneeling I ever saw. I prayed, and then I said: 

" Now you pray." 

" I have been trying all day; what shall I say? " 

" Ask God to have mercy upon you; ask God to save you." 

He stammered out a prayer, and after we arose he asked: 

" What is the next thing to do? " 

" Go down to the church and tell God's people you want 
to be among them, and that you want them to pray for you." 

" I never go to church ; I haven't been to church for twenty 
years, unless it was to the funeral of some prominent citizen." 

" It is time you did," I said. 

At the next meeting he was there before the minister was, 
and he came up and sat behind me. When he arose he took 
hold of the back of my seat, and I could feel it tremble, and he 
said: 

" My friends, you know all about me. If God can save a 
wretch like me I want you to pray that He will save me." 

There were not many dry eyes there. I returned that day 
to Chicago and I haven't been in that town since. 

Some years after, I was out on the Pacific coast. I 
preached at Pasadena, and after the service a gentleman 
stepped up and said: 

" Mr. Moody, will you go over to the hotel and take dinner 
with me? " I hesitated a little, and he said: 



A SOUL SAVED. jSq 

" Do you know me? " 

" I know your face," I said. 

'' Don't you remember Mr. ? " 

" Yes, I do; is it possible this is you? I want you to tell 
me one thing: have you ever sworn since that day when you 
kneeled in your drawing-room and asked God to have mercy 
on you? " 

" No, I never had a desire to swear after that," he answered. 

Within three months after his conversion he was elected 
an elder of the church, and he had been an elder ever since. 

I believe that every soul can be saved. I believe that if 
you make an honest cry for mercy you will get it. If you want 
salvation it is within your reach. The vilest can pray, the 
blackest can pray, the greatest sinner can pray; if there is an 
honest appeal sent up from your heart God will hear and 
answer it. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND HIS WORK. 

What Is the Holy Spirit? — " What Made You Tell Mr. Moody All 
About Me?" — An Old Negro Preacher's Observation — The 
Clock Without Hands — " Everything Going to Pieces " — A 
"Long-headed" Man — One "Long" Eye, and One "Short" 
Eye — The Hon. Mr. Lot, of Sodom — Grumblers and Fault- 
finders — Coming " To See How Moody Does It " — People Who 
Write Letters to Mr. Moody — "The Terrible Sin of Robbing 
Hen-Roosts" — A Caution to the Old Grave-digger — "To Rent, 
With or Without Power" — Two Ways of Digging a Well — A 
Well that " Froze up in Winter and Dried Up in Summer " — 
Forty Years of Work — The " Boy Preacher " — The Old Wooden 
Pump on the Farm — Lots of Noise but Little Water — Holding 
Meetings in a Tent — Running Against a Man's Theology. 

1 REMEMBER, after I had been a Christian about ten 
years, hearing an old Presbyterian minister say, in an 
evening prayer-meeting in Chicago, that we do not honor 
the Holy Ghost as we ought to when we speak of Him as an 
influence, not as a person. Up to that time I had always 
looked upon the Holy Ghost as one of the attributes of God, 
like Mercy, Love, and Justice, and I thought the old man was 
a little out of his head. After reaching home I took my 
Bible and read all there was in the Gospels about the Holy 
Spirit, and I found that Christ always spoke of Him as a per- 
son, never as a mere influence. 

The Bible ought to settle, it seems to me, all doubt in our 
minds that the Holy Ghost is a person, and not merely an in- 
fluence; and if we want to honor Him, let us treat Him as one 
of the Trinity, a personality of the Godhead. 

Now if I should ask what Jesus Christ came into the world 
to do, you would say that He came to seek and to save that 

(190) 



THE WORK OF THE SPIRIT. l gf 

which was lost; that He came to reveal the Father; but if I 
should ask what the Holy Ghost came to do, I believe a good 
many would have a little difficulty in answering the question. 
I was in the church a long time before I took pains to look into 
the subject to know what is His work in this world. 

In the first place, His work is to convict of sin. I believe 
I had rather go out in the street to-day and break stone or 
shovel snow than attempt to do the work of convicting an 
audience of sin. Thank God, that is not my work! There is 
no power that can convince a man or woman of the exceeding 
sinfulness of unbelief except that of the Holy Ghost. I be- 
lieve Elijah might come back here and preach as he did on 
Mt. Carmel, and if the Holy Ghost did not convict of sin, not 
one soul would be convinced. I believe that Gabriel might 
come and preach as only an angel could, and if the Holy Ghost 
didn't work in the hearts and consciences of men, not a soul 
would be convinced. 

People do not want to be troubled; they don't like to be 
told their faults. If a minister only flatters us and tells us that 
we are such very good people, and so angelic, that is just what 
we like. I heard of a man who said he liked to go to a certain 
church because the minister never touched on religion or 
politics. A friend and I once found a man asleep on the side- 
walk. It was one of the coldest days of winter, and we knew 
he would freeze if we didn't wake him. We awoke him, and 
he got mad and wanted to fight. That was just what we 
wanted — to get his blood stirred and then he would be all 
right. Sometimes the Holy Ghost wakes up men and they 
wake up angry. There are a good many people who don't 
want their consciences disturbed; but when the Holy Ghost 
works upon everybody, there will be some troubled ones. I 
have known people to go out of our meetings and slam the 
door behind them as hard as they could. That is not a bad 
sign; I would rather have them go out mad than go to sleep. 

I remember when I was preaching in Philadelphia a lady 
and her husband were present at one of the meetings. As she 



192 



A MAN SELF-CONDEMNED. 



took his arm to go home, she made some remark about the 
meeting, and he was as cross as could be; she couldn't get a 
word out of him. He had never before, since they were 
married, let a night pass without kissing her, and she felt that 
she had made a great mistake in trying to get him out to those 
meetings. The next morning when she spoke to him he 
wouldn't answer, and it was the same way at noon and at 
night. He kept that up for a whole week. Finally, when he 
couldn't hold in any longer, he said: 

" Wife, what made you tell Mr. Moody all about me? " 
" Why," said she, " I never spoke to Mr. Moody in my life." 
" Then you have written to him about me." 
" No, I have never written to him, and he didn't know you 
were there." 

" Well," he said, " I never saw him before in my life; but 
the wretch held me up before that audience for a whole hour, 
and told them all about me." 

I wish I had the power to make every one think I was 
preaching right at him individually. The greatest trouble is, 
as the old negro preacher told his congregation, people are 
very liberal with sermons and give them all away. I was once 
preaching in a church that had been built by a rich whiskey 
dealer, and when I found that out 1 bore down on him pretty 
hard; but after the service he came to me and earnestly told 
me what a fine sermon it was. He had applied it to somebody 
else. When the Spirit of God works, He applies the truth, 
and just carries the truth home to the heart and conscience, 
and conviction follows. That is what we want, and we are 
going to get that by honoring the Holy Ghost. We are not 
going to get it from the minister; he hasn't got that power. 

After a man has been convicted and is willing to give up 
sin, the next thing the Spirit does is to shed abroad the love 
of God in the heart. People try to make themselves love, but 
they can't do that. Love must be spontaneous. You may 
try to love an unlovely person, but you can't do it by trying. 
Love is shed abroad by the Spirit. 



LOVE MUST HAVE AN OUTLET. 



193 



I thought when I was converted that every Christian ought 
to wear a badge, — an outside badge, — but I have changed 
my mind, because if that was done every hypocrite would get 
a badge and put it on. When Christ was on earth He said, 
" A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one 
another." If we are filled with love, even infidels and skeptics 
will say: " Those people are Christians." I have seen it over 
and over again. 

A man may be a miser with his money, and with his com- 
forts, but he cannot be a miser with his love. Love must have 
an outlet. You cannot keep it. It must have an object out- 
side of itself. When a man is filled with the love of God, he 
cannot help but work for Him. A man may be a successful 
merchant, but have no love for his customers; he may be a 
successful lawyer, and have no love for his clients; he may be 
a successful doctor, and have no love for his patients; but a 
man cannot work for God without love. He can't do it. A 
man's religion that has no love in it is like a clock without 
hands. It may have beautiful machinery, and you may put it 
in a fine case and stud it with diamonds, but it will not be worth 
anything as a timekeeper. A person has got to love, to win 
other people to Christ. If I am cross and peevish and disa- 
greeable, I may be ever so sound in doctrine, but I shall not 
win any one to accept it. They will hate me, and hate it, and 
despise it. 

I once went into a restaurant with a couple of professing 
Christians, and we sat there five minutes; and one of them — 
he was a prominent man — called up the head waiter, and said 
in a loud voice, " What does this mean, sir? We have been 
here half an hour waiting for some one to come," and he gave 
the head waiter a good blowing up. That man knew there 
was not a word of truth in it. We hadn't been there over five 
minutes. I was ashamed of the company I was in, and have 
been careful not to be caught again. Yet that man boasted 
of his sound theology. He lives on that. What do I care 
for his theology? You have got to be lovely yourself if you 



KV, THE WAY TO LIBERTY. 

are going to win other love. Love begets love; a smile begets 
a smile. You have got to win souls, not drive them away. It 
takes true wisdom to do that. 

The next thing the Spirit of God does, is to impart hope. 
I never have seen a man or woman filled with the Spirit of 
God who did not hope. They look on the bright side all the 
time; they look into the future, and find there is nothing but 
victory ahead. Where the Spirit of God is there is liberty. 
In some churches if a man gets up to speak he is hampered. 
You have seen men in the pulpit who were floundering around 
and couldn't get on. Ministers know what I am talking 
about. I have been there myself lots of times. Sometimes 
the fault was with D. L. Moody, and sometimes it was in the 
congregation. The Holy Ghost has got to have an atmos- 
phere to work in. 

A friend of mine was teaching in Natchez before the Civil 
War, and he and a friend went out riding one Saturday and 
drove into the country. Seeing an old slave coming up, they 
thought they would have a little fun. They had just come to a 
place where there was a fork in the roads, and there was a sign- 
post which read, " Forty miles to Liberty." One of the 
young men said to the old darkey: 

" Sambo, how old are you? " 

" I don't know, massa. I reckon I'se 'bout eighty." 

" Can you read? " 

" No, sah ; we don't read in dis yer country. It's agin de 
law." 

" Can you tell what is on that signpost? " 

" Yes, sah; it says ' Forty miles to Liberty.' ,! 

" Well, now," said my friend, " why don't you follow that 
road and get your liberty? " 

The old man's countenance changed, and he said: 

" Oh, massa, dat is all a sham. . If dat post p'inted out de 
road to de liberty dat God gives, we might try it. Dar 
wouldn't be no sham 'bout dat." 

My friend said he had never heard anything more eloquent 



THE HABIT OF SILENCE. 



195 



from the lips of any preacher. God wants all his sons to have 
liberty. 

A friend of mine once asked a judge in his church to ac- 
company him to a schoolhouse in the country, where he was 
going to preach. He told the judge he would like to have 
him speak to the people. The judge said, " Oh, I can't do 
that." "Why can't you? You can speak in court well 
enough, and without any trouble. Why can't you speak here? 
Suppose you just try it." When they arrived the judge de- 
clined to speak, but the minister said, " I want to put the judge 
into the witness-box and question him." And the judge got 
his lips open at last and told how he was converted, and how 
the spirit ot God came down upon him. There was mighty 
power in what he said, and the result was that many were con- 
verted, and the judge became an earnest working Christian. 
I think there are hundreds bound, as he was, by station. I 
met at a meeting a man whom I had known to be a professing 
Christian for three years, and I supposed of course he had 
prayed in public. I noticed that he hesitated when I asked 
him, but he rose, and as soon as he had opened his lips the 
words came easily. I heard him tell a friend afterward that 
that night he felt as if he had been converted a second time. 
How many there are in the church that are bound to silence 
by long habit! 

I believe that the weakness of many Christians is that they 
are trying to do their work with money, or with influence, or 
with intellectual and social power. These are all right in their 
place, but they are not going to redeem the world. 

I suppose if you had gone to Sodom a week before its de- 
struction, they would have told you that Mr. Lot was one of 
the most influential men in that city, — perhaps had the finest 
" turn-out " and owned some of the best corner lots in the 
town. If you had talked with him about removing your busi- 
ness and your family down to Sodom, he would have said, 
" Well, I am doing very much better here than Abraham is 
doing on the plains with his tent and his altar." A good many 



196 



LONG AND SHORT SIGHT. 



men, no doubt, thought Lot " long-headed." Such men may 
be the most successful of business men, but their children may 
be going to ruin while they are pushing for money. Such a 
man is often called "long-headed." The Lord pity him! 

I had a friend once who said he could never understand 
why his wife was always so eager to buy paintings. He 
couldn't see any beauty in them. A few years ago his sight 
began to fail. He went to an oculist, who said to him, " My 
dear sir, how have you got along all these years? You have 
one ' long ' eye and one ' short ' eye, and you never saw any- 
thing straight." He fitted him out with glasses, and he be- 
came even more interested in paintings than his wife was. He 
built an art gallery and filled it, and " saw " beautifully. Many 
a Christian has a " long " eye and a " short " eye. You can 
never see clearly in that way. 

Abraham was a long-sighted man and Lot a short-sighted 
man. Lot saw the well-watered plain of Sodom, and chose it 
for himself and family. I suppose if there had been a railroad 
running from Sodom to Jerusalem, Mr. Lot would have been 
the president of it. He would have been universally spoken of 
as the Hon. Mr. Lot, of Sodom. An honorable name, but 
his family was going to ruin all the time. Lot was a man of 
great influence, but I can find a thousand Lots where I can 
find one Abraham. I can find a thousand men piling up their 
millions and all the time their children are going to perdition. 

Get the spirit of criticism and grumbling out of the way 
and go to work. Men and women who are doing nothing 
easily get into the habit of finding fault; then they write letters, 
and criticise the minister, and tell how he ought to preach. 
That is part of the business of people who have nothing to 
do; I have seen it over and over again. People go out from 
a meeting and say of the preacher, " What do you think of 
him, anyhow?" "Why, I must confess I was greatly disap- 
pointed. I like that man in St. Paul's Church better." " Oh, 
I'd rather hear our pastor any day. There are plenty of men 
who can preach better than he can." " I didn't like his ges- 



CAPTIOUS CRITICISM. I gy 

tures; I don't like his manner." "He wasn't logical; I have 
got a logical turn of mind, and when I go to hear preaching, 
I want to hear logic." " He was not argumentative; I am of 
an argumentative turn of mind, and I like argument." " I 
have a good deal of hard work during the week, and when I 
go to church I want a man to appeal to my emotions. If he 
don't appeal to my emotions, I don't like him. He isn't my 
style, anyway." And so they pick the preacher to pieces, and 
wonder why they don't have a blessing. Anyone can criticise. 
I have always noticed if a man fails in everything else he can 
go into the business of criticising. And if they can't reach 
me in any other way, they'll write me letters. It takes neither 
brains nor heart to do that; anyone can do that. I have had 
men tell me how to preach who couldn't find enough people 
to preach to. I have seen people come to our meetings and 
sit with their brows knit to " see how Moody does it." Never 
think of praying for me, — only want to " see how he does 
it! " They come on the platform to " see what is the secret 
of his success." There is no secret; nothing mysterious. Get 
up and go to work, and pray God to teach you the secret, and 
stop fault-finding and grumbling. 

A great many people have had their feelings terribly 
wounded, and have written me letters, because I have spoken 
of some things in the church that ought not to be there. Do 
you tell me I don't love the church? Do you think I would 
have given up business over forty years ago, and given my 
whole life, and all I have, if I didn't love the church? I know 
I love it, but " faithful are the wounds of a friend." If there is 
anything wrong in the church, let us get it right. One minis- 
ter said if he overhauled his church he would lose his pastor- 
ate. Lose it! I would rather be out of the church if I did 
not have liberty to preach. 

Some one asked an old colored man how he liked his 
minister. 

" Oh," said he, " he's a fine preacher! Such a good 
preacher." 
13 



igS THE TEMPLE OF THE HOLY GHOST. 

" What did he preach on this morning? " 

" This morning? Oh, let me see, he had for his subject the 
terrible sin of robbing henroosts, but he was so polite he didn't 
hurt nobody's feelings." 

We don't want to be " polite " in that sense. I want to 
hurt people's feelings if they are doing wrong. 

When Christ died on the cross the veil of the Temple was 
rent in twain; and from that time on these bodies of ours be- 
came the temple of the Holy Ghost. Christ said, " He dwell- 
eth with you, and shall be in you." Don't get the. idea that 
He comes to you in church and leaves you when you go out 
of doors. He shall abide with you. If this is true, ought we 
not to take good care of these bodies? If they are the temple 
of the Holy Ghost, ought we not to keep them pure and sweet? 
I never had the advantage of an education, but when God 
called me into His service, I hungered and thirsted to be used 
by Him, and I wanted to get hold of the Bible. I left this 
country and went to England, that I might sit at the feet of 
Charles Spurgeon and George Miiller. Spurgeon said to me 
something I have never forgotten. He said, " Young man, 
take good care of your body, because it is a temple for the 
Holy Ghost to dwell in. You can't take care of your soul; 
God must take care of that; but you can take care of the temple 
it dwells in." If these bodies are the temple of the Holy 
Ghost, ought we to defile them with whiskey and tobacco? 

I heard Andrew Bonar say, when he was in this country 
many years ago, that once when they were burying a saint of 
God, and because he was old and very poor, and his children 
and friends had all passed on before him, the bearers were 
hurrying him away to the grave as fast as they could. An old 
minister was officiating, and as they were hurrying to get the 
body into the grave, he said to the grave-digger, " Mon, tread 
softly, ye bear the temple of the Holy Ghost." And when I 
think of this body of mine being a temple for the Holy Ghost, 
and that it belongs to God, and it is not my own, I feel as if 1 
want to keep it as pure and sweet as I can. May God help us 



WITH OR WITHOUT POWER. !qq 

all. And I believe when the temple is ready, God will come 
and fill it. 

Now we come to the question, What is the baptism of the 
Holy. Spirit? The moment you are " born again," the Holy 
Spirit comes into your heart and makes it His temple. " Be- 
hold, I stand at the door, and knock ; if any man hear My voice, 
and open the door, I will come in to him." Your body and 
mine is the temple of God. No Christian can receive more of 
the Holy Spirit than he already has. If you should invite me 
to come and spend a week with you, I would not come in sec- 
tions, first my head, then my arms, then some other part of 
my body. All there is of me would come at once, because 
that is the only way I can come. The Holy Spirit is a person, 
and when He comes, all there is of Him will come at once. 

I heard Dr. Gordon say that you might walk through any 
great city thoroughfare and you very often would notice the 
sign, " This shop to rent, with or without power." He thought 
it was very suggestive, and that it would be a good thing to 
apply to Christians. Now, do you want to be numbered 
among those with power, or without power? If you want to 
be numbered among those with power, pray that God may 
give you power, and that you may be quickened as God wants 
to quicken us. 

" If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink. He 
that believeth on mc, as the Scripture hath said, out of his 
belly shall flow rivers of living water." Better than showers, 
isn't it? Better even than a spring. There is a spring up in 
the mountain near my home that feeds a little brook, and that 
little brook goes babbling over its pebbly bed, making a noise 
all the time and always making itself known; but when the 
heat of summer comes the waters of that brook arc dried up, 
and there is nothing left of it. Then, not far away, is the great, 
silent Connecticut River. I never hear that river; would not 
know it was there, because it does not make any noise; but 
follow it down in its silent course and you will find all along its 
banks great mills and manufactories that are given power by 



20O DIGGING FOR WATER, 

its waters. I believe it is the privilege of every one to have 
the Spirit of God resting upon him, so that he will be just like 
that river. 

There are two ways of digging a well. One is to dig until 
you come to water, and stop there, though the water won't 
last long. Another is, to dig down and down and down till 
you get a never-failing supply. Some of our Mt. Hermon 
boys once undertook to dig a well. When they got down six 
or eight feet they struck water. A pump was put in and set 
in motion, and very soon the well was pumped dry. Then 
they went on digging till they struck a rock, and the water 
burst forth. They thought they had got deep enough that 
time. But when the pump was set to work, it wasn't many 
days before the well was dry again. We said we mustn't stop 
till we got to where the water couldn't be exhausted. So we 
went down and down till we struck clay, and then gravel, and 
then flinty rock; and at last we got to a lower stratum that 
yielded a never-failing supply of water. 

I remember the first time I was in California I stood in a 
valley and noticed that in one section vegetation was green 
and vigorous. But just over the fence everything was dried 
up. On that side of the fence was another ranch, and there 
was scarcely a bit of vegetation there. I thought that was 
very curious, and I said to a farmhand: "Can you explain 
why on one side of the fence vegetation is fresh and green, and 
on the other side it is all dried up? " " Oh, yes," said he, " one 
man irrigates — he brings water down from the mountain and 
thoroughly waters his farm. The other doesn't." I think that 
is the way with a good many Christians in our churches. 
Some are dried up ; but others have a secret communica- 
tion between their souls and Heaven, and God sends the water 
to them and keeps them always fresh. You may be as dry as 
Gideon's fleece — all dried up — no power at all; but it is the 
privilege of each one of us to have the dew of Heaven resting 
upon us all the while. That is what God wants. 

Drink deep; don't be satisfied with merely " getting water." 



A CONSECRATED LIEE. 2 OI 

If I have got a tumbler full of water, I can say I've got water 
as much as if I owned a river ; and you can say a great many 
people have Christ, but you have got to probe deep to fincl 
life. Jesus came that we might have life, and that we might 
have it " more abundantly." A man said he had a well, a good 
well, only " it froze up in winter, and dried up in summer." 
There are many Christians who are just like that. People 
talk about " spasmodic effort." I am as much opposed to 
that as any other man. I don't believe in spasmodic efforts. 
When a man drinks as God wants him, he can't help working 
summer or winter. 

I am one of those old-fashioned people who believe the 
Bible. I believe it is literally true of any man who examines 
it with the Spirit that rivers of truth will flow out of him. As 
a tree is full of sap, so is the Christian who is full of the Spirit. 
The tree full of sap will bear leaves and blossoms and fruit. 
And when a man is full of the breath of God, his life will be 
filled with fruit. 

You haven't got to go back to the days of Martin Luther, 
or to Wesley, or to Whirefield, by a good deal, to find lives that 
have been filled with fruit. Only a few years ago a man died, 
— no, thank God ! he never died, he lives more now than ever 
before — who had never been to Oxford, or Cambridge; but 
God said to him, " Charles, you go to London and I will let 
rivers of life flow from yon." He went to London, and stayed 
there forty years, and tens of thousands listened to him every 
Sunday; and no man ever attracted such vast crowds under 
one roof. At first they called him a " Boy Preacher." They 
laughed at and ridiculed him. They tried to make him out an 
ignorant clown. But see where his influence is to-day. See 
what power he has to-day, and what he had for forty years. 
Every Thursdav a sermon of his came out printed in many 
languages, and it went into all the corners of the earth, and 
thus he preached to people everywhere. I cannot begin to tell 
of the results of that one man's work. He founded an orphan 
asylum for two hundred and fifty boys, and another for two 



202 SPURGEON'S WONDERFUL INFLUENCE. 

hundred and fifty girls, where children taken from the streets 
were given a home and trained in ways of righteousness. He 
founded one of the finest theological seminaries in the world, 
which is constantly training young men for the ministry; he 
had a society cf colporteurs circulating good books; he had 
evangelists that went all over London and the suburbs preach- 
ing the Gospel ; he had an institution that he called a " poor 
man's house," where he gathered in the poor and forsaken and 
preached the Gospel to them. When I was in London many 
years ago there were at that time eighty churches in the city 
and its vicinity that had sprung up through that man's efforts. 
You can hardly go into a minister's library anywhere to-day 
that you do not find volumes of Charles Spurgeon's sermons. 
He fed the flock of God for forty years in a great many differ- 
ent ways. How many different volumes of books have come 
from his pen! How many streams of life he set in motion! 
I don't believe the four walls of any church can hold the in- 
fluence of a man filled with the spirit of God. I believe the 
world has yet to see what God can do with a man full of the 
Holy Ghost. 

I remember an old wooden pump on the farm when I was 
a boy, and how I used to pump water for the cattle and pump 
for the family, pump, pump, pump, until it seemed as 
though my arm would drop off; and sometimes the old pump 
would squeak and make a good deal of noise, and I wouldn't 
get much water. I find lots of people pumping away, squeak- 
ing and making a great deal of noise, but they get hardly any 
water. They are pumping out of dry w T ells. Haven't you 
seen people pump and pump, and talk and talk like a parrot, 
and all they said didn't amount to anything? No heart in it! 
No power! 

A lady once came to me at the close of a service and said: 

" Mr. Moody, you have made me perfectly miserable." 

" How is that? " I said. 

" Why, you said you pitied a woman who had no religious 
home influence over her husband and family. When I mar- 



AN IRRITABLE CHRISTIAN. 203 

ried my husband, I thought I would soon bring him into the 
kingdom of God, I thought I should have no trouble in get- 
ting him to come to Christ; but now I think he is further away 
than he was then, and I have not as much influence as I used 
to have. When I try to talk with him about his soul it is a 
forced conversation, and I can't talk with him about eternal 
things. I have trouble with my servants all the time, and I 
never have been able to help one of them to Christ, although 
I have wanted to." 

" Would you allow me to speak very plainly with you? " 

" Yes." 

" Don't you get angry with your husband once in a while, 
and give him what in New England we sometimes call ' a good 
blowing up'; and then when you want to talk to him about 
becoming a Christian, you have a feeling that he will say, 
' You had better look at home, you are no better than I am ? ' " 

" Yes, Mr. Moody, that is true." 

" Then, instead of praying for your husband, hadn't I 
better pray for you? " 

She asked me to pray for her, and I did. Some days after 
that she came to me and said: 

" Mr. Moody, I want to thank you for talking to me as 
plainly as you did the other day. If I had known that you 
were going to talk to me in that way I wouldn't have come 
near you. When I left you I went home and locked myself up 
with God, and my conscience searched my soul and revealed 
me to myself. I saw how irritable I had been, and how I had 
scolded my husband without provocation; then I noticed that 
my conduct with my servants had not been at all Christ-like. 
When my husband came home that night I met him at the 
door and asked him to forgive me. He was very much sur- 
prised and wanted to know what I had been doing. I said, 
' Well, you know we have been married now for so many 
years, and I haven't lived as a Christian ought to live. I 
haven't been consistent; I have been cross and irritable so 
many times, and I have scolded so many times without cause, 



204 



THE HIGHER LIFE. 



and my life has been such that I am afraid I have kept you 
from becoming a Christian, and God knows I love you better 
than any one on earth, and I wouldn't stand between you and 
God for all the world.' My husband couldn't stand that; he 
broke right down, and God gave him back to me that night." 

If you have ever lived in England you know what a great 
barrier is built up between the Church of England and what 
they call the Dissenting churches. I was asked a few years 
ago to go down to a county parish to preach on Saturday and 
Sunday. When I arrived I found that a large tent had been 
provided to hold the services in, and that the Church of Eng- 
land people and the Dissenters were working together har- 
moniously. I was entertained by a wealthy churchman of 
great prominence in the community, and I found that his 
house was filled with Dissenting ministers who had come to 
the meetings, whom he was entertaining. It was so unusual 
to find a man in his position fraternizing with every conceiv- 
able kind of worker in the whole county that I said to him, 
"How long has this been going on?" He replied, " There 
was a time when if I met a Dissenting minister I wouldn't 
look at him or bow to him; I really thought that every Dis- 
senting minister was doing all he could to tear down the 
Church of England. I went over to Kassock and I met some 
men there who told me about being filled with the Spirit of 
God, and I tried to get into this higher life. When I was 
filled with the Spirit, the first thing I did was to go to every 
Dissenting minister in my county and talk and pray w 7 ith him ; 
and since then every minister who has come into this county 
has never preached but he has had my prayers." Here was 
a man who was a blessing to nearly every family in the whole 
region. He got the blessing and passed it on to others. 

The first time I was in Dundee I went into a great stone 
church and the congregation was so slim you could have fired 
a cannon ball right through it and not hit anybody; but the 
young minister's heart was full of the fire of the Holy Ghost, 
and when I was there a few years afterward you couldn't get 



A MINISTER AWAKENED. 



205 



into the aisles. Hundreds of people had been converted just 
because that young man was filled with the Spirit of God. 

I remember when I first went to England with Mr. Sankey, 
at a service where I was presenting this subject, I noticed a 
Presbyterian minister in the audience who hid his face in his 
hands. I said to myself, " I have run against that man's the- 
ology." I used to be very much afraid of running against 
the theology of ministers! When the meeting was over he 
went out of the door as though he had been shot out of a 
cannon, and I said to Mr. Sankey, " I am afraid that minister 
is offended at something I said." At the next meeting I 
looked for him but he wasn't there; and at the next and the 
next, and so on for a whole week, but I didn't see him, It was 
just at the beginning of our work in England, when we were 
trying to get a foothold there, and I was very anxious not to 
offend any of the ministers. About a week from that time he 
came into the noon prayer-meeting, and rose and told about 
being at the meeting a week before; and he said he came to the 
conclusion on that day that if God had got anything more for 
him he was going to have it; and, he added, "I have been 
closeted with God for the past week, and He has answered my 
prayer." He moved that whole assemblage; everybody knew 
that he had received a great blessing, and it spread through 
the audience like wildfire. He said that before he got this 
blessing his church wasn't one-third full. On the third Sab- 
bath after that I went down to his church and I couldn't get 
inside; I had to stand outside and look in at the window. 
Some time after, he said to me, " T haven't preached one ser- 
mon since God gave me that anointing that there have not 
been conversions." 

Some Englishmen were traveling in Africa with the idea of 
colonizing. They came to a beautiful place in the mountains 
and asked the natives if they had an abundance of water. They 
said, " No, there were a few months last summer when we 
didn't have any rain. The clouds came over us but they didn't 
break, and it is pretty dry up here now." They went to an- 



2o6 THE OLD GOSPEL WITH NEW POWER. 

other place and were told that during a certain season there 
was no rain. But at the third place the natives said they had 
plenty of water ; the clouds were pierced up there on that high 
ground, and they got under the clouds. I have seen churches 
that were living under pierced clouds, and they go on year 
after year with an abundance of living water ; and I have seen 
churches as dry as the mountains of Gilboa — not a drop of 
dew on them. 

I know a minister who sought this blessing, and in ten 
months he received three hundred and eighty into his church 
on profession of faith. The church had never been so full 
since it was built. Over two thousand people in that city 
flocked to hear him preach just because he was filled with the 
Spirit of God. It is not a new Gospel that we want, it is the 
old Gospel with new power. 



CHAPTER VI. 

SOWING AND REAPING — WHAT SHALL THE 
HARVEST BE? 

Family Skeletons — Teaching Servants to Lie — " Isn't It Strange? " — 
Teaching Clerks Dishonesty — Mr. Moody's Challenge — A Man 
Who Accepted It, and the Result — Reckoning the Cost — Fore- 
closing the last Mortgage — Sowing Wild Oats — Sentenced to 
Prison for Life — The Man in Tears in the Balcony — The Story 
of a Confidential Clerk — " I Am Beyond Help " — Reaping as He 
had Sown — "Hello, Stranger, What Are You Sowing?" — A 
Story of John B. Gough — Mr. Moody's Reminiscences of Him — 
The Man Who Sowed Oats and Thistles — An Incident in 
Chicago — Deserting Wife and Children — The Fugitive Forger — 
The Last Night at Home — In a Convict's Garb — A Terrible 
Dilemma — A Letter of Warning — Returning to the Old Home 
— " No Such Person Lives Here " — The End of a Misspent Life. 

I BELIEVE that the text " Whatsoever a man soweth, that 
shall he also reap," applies to saint and sinner alike; to 
every human being on the face of the earth. It makes no 
difference what nation he belongs to, whether he is Jew or 
Gentile, Romanist or Protestant. Here is a law that has been 
in force for six thousand years, and neither devil nor man has 
been able to break it. 

You might as well try to blot the sun out of the heavens 
as to blot out this truth. You can't get around it or over it. 
It meets every man, whether it be the minister in the pulpit 
or the man in the pew; it is the law for David, or for Ahab; 
ruler or peasant, agnostic, infidel, pantheist, deist; it makes 
no difference. You can't take up the daily papers but you 
read that men reap what they have sown ten, fifteen, or twenty 
years before. You haven't got to go out of your own ex- 
perience for proof of the truth of this text. You will yourself 
say, " That is true in my case. I have had to reap." 

(207) 



2o8 UNBELIEF DOES NOT CHANGE FACTS. 

I remember giving out this text at one of our meetings, 
and a man said he didn't believe it. " Well/' I said, " my 
friend, that does not change the fact." There's a class of 
people who labor under the delusion that because they don't 
believe a thing, the thing isn't true. Now listen, truth is truth 
whether you believe it or not. A lie is a lie whether you be- 
lieve it or not. The fact was, that man didn't want to believe 
it. When the meeting broke up an officer was at the door 
who had a warrant to arrest that very man. He was taken 
into court, tried for crime, found guilty, and was sent to prison 
for twelve months. I have no doubt when he got into his 
cell he found the text true. 

You can deceive your wife; you can deceive your neigh- 
bors; yes, you can even deceive yourself. But you can't de- 
ceive God. So, if we are deceived, let us pray God to open 
our eyes. You may trifle with some things, but don't trifle 
with eternal things. There is no one truth in the Bible that 
has had such an influence over my life as that one. I have 
said to myself, " How stupid I was not to see that truth years 
ago." Look at the men and women who are sowing now, 
only to reap, in after years, in tears and agony and untold 
sorrow. 

I am not in the habit of dividing up my texts; I don't like 
to say " firstly," " secondly," and " finally," and " in con- 
clusion," and all that. I get lost before I get to the " con- 
clusion." But it is a good thing to do. Spurgeon told me he 
could never " get on " unless he had five points. That is the 
preparation he made, and he would fill them up in the pulpit. 
I have never been able to get on with so many divisions; but 
I am going to divide up this subject, and bring everything 
under four heads. 

First: A man expects to reap. 

Second: He expects to reap the same kind of seed he sows. 

Third : He expects to reap more than he sows. 

Fourth: He must reap the fruit, no matter how ignorant he 
may be, or claims to be, of the nature of the seed. 



WEBSTER'S INSURANCE CASE. 



209 



A man expects to reap. Do you think farmers would plant 
their grain and potatoes if they knew that there was to come 
a famine? No, they would save their seed and their time, and 
let their farms rest. Men remain a long time in college, and 
many go abroad to finish their studies, and then start in some 
profession. It is slow work getting started, but they look for- 
ward to a time when they will reap a good harvest. Young 
men spend years in learning a trade, but they look for their 
reward by and by; instead of the wages of a day laborer they 
expect to receive the wages of an experienced mechanic. 
Every man looks forward to the reaping time. 

An insurance case was brought to Daniel Webster when he 
was a young lawyer in Portsmouth. Only a small amount was 
involved, and a twenty-dollar fee was all. that was promised. 
He saw that to do his client full justice a journey to Boston 
would be necessary, in order to consult the law library. He 
would be out of pocket by the expedition, and for the time he 
would receive no adequate compensation. But he determined 
to do his best, cost what it might. He went to Boston, looked 
up the authorities, and won the case. 

Years after, Webster, who had meanwhile become famous, 
was passing through New York. An important insurance case 
was to be tried that day, and one of the counsel had suddenly 
been taken ill. Money was no object, and Webster was begged 
to name his terms and conduct the case. 

" I told them," said Mr. Webster, " that it was preposterous 
to expect me to prepare a legal argument at a few hours' no- 
tice. They insisted, however, that I should look at the papers, 
and this I finally consented to do. It was my old twenty-dollar 
case over again, and as I never forgot anything, I had all the 
authorities at my fingers' ends. The court knew that I had no 
time to prepare for the case, and was astonished at the range 
of my acquirements. So you see, I was handsomely repaid 
both in fame and money for that journey to Boston. And the 
moral is that good work is rewarded in the end." 

A man expects to reap the same kind of seed he sows. If I 



2IO SOCIAL LIES AND BUSINESS LIES. 

should tell you that I sowed ten acres of wheat last year and 
that watermelons came up, or that I sowed cucumbers and 
gathered turnips, you wouldn't believe it. It is a fixed law 
that you shall reap the same kind of seed you sow. Plant 
wheat and you reap wheat; plant an acorn and there comes up 
an oak; plant a little elm and in time you have a big elm. This 
law is just as true in God's kingdom as in man's kingdom; just 
as true in the spiritual world as in the natural world. If I sow 
tares, I am going to reap tares. If I sow a lie, I am going to 
reap lies. If I sow adultery, I am going to reap adulterers. 
If I sow whiskey, I am going to reap drunkards. You cannot 
blot this law out. No other truth in the Bible is so solemn. 

A lady once said to me: 

" Why is it that I don't get better service from my servants? 
Isn't it strange? " 

" No," I said, " I don't think it is strange. When ladies 
will teach their servants to go to the door and tell callers that 
they are ' out,' when all the time they are ' in,' and at home, 
but don't want to be seen, they won't have trustworthy serv- 
ants. If they lie to your callers, they will lie to you." 

" Oh, Mr. Moody, we don't mean anything when we say 
we are ' out.' It is only a society lie." 

" Yes," I said, " but madam, a society lie is as bad a lie as 
any other lie. There is no difference." 

A man said to me some time ago: "Why is it that we 
cannot get honest clerks now? " I replied that I didn't know. 
But perhaps I can imagine a reason. When merchants teach 
clerks to say that goods are all wool when they are half cotton, 
and to adulterate groceries and say they are pure; when they 
grind up white marble and put it into pulverized sugar and the 
clerk knows it, you will not have honest clerks. As long as 
merchants teach their clerks to He and misrepresent, to put a 
French or an English tag on domestic goods and sell them for 
imported goods, just so long they will have dishonest clerks. 
Young men who cheat in their lessons while going through 
college will cheat when they get out. It is not fiction but 



A STATEMENT NEVER RETRACTED. 2 II 

solemn fact that a man must reap the same kind of seed that 
he sows. 

This is a tremendous argument against selling liquor. 
Leaving out the temperance and religious aspects of the ques- 
tion, no man on earth can afford to sell strong drink. If I 
sell liquor to your son and make a drunkard of him, some man 
will sell liquor to my son and make a drunkard of him. Every 
man who sells liquor has a drunken son, or a drunken brother, 
or some drunken relative. Where are the sons of liquor 
dealers? To whom are their daughters married? Look 
around and see if you can find a man who has been in that 
business twenty years who has not a skeleton in his family. 

You will find some men who have made themselves mil- 
lionaires by the sale of liquors. Where are their sons? In 
drunkards' graves. You won't have to travel far to prove 
what I say. I once threw down that challenge, and a man 
came to the hotel where I was staying, and said : 

" I understand you threw down a challenge. Take it 
back; for it is not true." 

" Give me the facts," I said. " I will make a retraction 
if it is not true." 

" My father was a rumseller, and I am a rumseller, and the 
curse never came into my father's family nor mine." 

" Well," I said, " I have traveled all over Christendom, and 
this is the first time I have heard my statement denied." 

u You call it an accursed business, but the ' curse ' has 
never struck either family," he said. 

Two prominent citizens were in the room at the time, and 
I said to them: 

" I will investigate. I am going to speak to-night, and I 
will take back my statement if it is not true." 

When he went out, one of those men said: 

*' That man's brother committed suicide only six weeks ago 
in this city, and left a widow and seven children, and he has 
that widow and children to care for. And he himself was 
drunk this week." 



212 NO EVIL-DOER ESCAPES. 

And yet he said " The curse never came into my family." 
Some men don't think the curse comes to them unless it comes 
down on their own heads. Their daughters may marry 
drunkards, and may have " a little hell " all their own, but it 
does not seem to " come to them " at all. No man can afford 
to sell whiskey. If you are in the business, take my advice, 
get an axe and knock the barrels in the head. 

Am I speaking to a man or woman who is renting prop- 
erty for whiskey selling? The curse will come to your family. 
I was in a town sometime ago where a wealthy man had built 
a handsome house in a very respectable part of the city, and 
when the house was finished some one offered him a very large 
rent for it, to be used for a brothel. He had four promising 
sons, and every one of them were ruined in that house. How 
much did he make? Sit down and reckon it up. Sow 
brothels and you will reap adultery and it will come into your 
family. You can't put temptation in the way of young men, 
but it will come back to you. 

If you will read the Bible you will find that for six thou- 
sand years men have reaped what they sowed. God made 
Adam reap before he left Eden. There was no detective, no 
police, no sheriff, no constable there. I would like to know 
what these agnostics and infidels and atheists make out of 
that, — that God brought men to judgment? Sin found 
Adam out, didn't it? Men may escape the law of the State; 
laws may be made at the capitol, and man may evade those 
laws; but God has laws that no man can escape. You will reap 
as you haz'e sown. 

A man reaps more than lie sows. If I sow a bushel I expect 
to reap ten or twenty bushels. I can sow in one day what will 
take ten men to reap. And it takes a longer time to reap than 
to sow. When I hear a man talking in a flippant way about 
sowing his wild oats, I don't laugh. I feel more like crying, 
because I know he is going to make his gray-haired mother 
reap in tears; he is going to make his wife reap in shame; he is 
going to make his old father and his innocent children reap 



A MILLIONAIRE CONVICT. 



213 



with him. Only ten, or fifteen, or twenty years will pass be- 
fore he will have to reap his wild oats; no man has ever sowed 
them without having to reap them. Sow the wind and you 
will reap a whirlwind. 

There was a man in the Ohio penitentiary who died of 
cancer a little while ago. He was there between thirty and 
forty years. A railroad line to New York was laid out to run 
through his town. They came to him and wanted to buy his 
farm and lay the line through it. He said, " No. I expect 
the town will grow, and I think the railroad will injure my 
property." He refused to sell. The Commissioners could do 
nothing with him, and the court authorized the railroad com- 
pany to lay the route right through his farm. One dark night 
after the railroad was completed some one put an obstruction 
on the track, and there was a dreadful railroad accident. Lives 
were lost. Suspicion fell upon him. He was tried, found 
guilty, and sent to prison for life. That little town has grown 
to be a city of over thirty thousand inhabitants. The develop- 
ment of that farm made him a millionaire; but he himself was 
branded and died a criminal. In that little, narrow cell he 
spent his days, and a cancer relieved him from this life. It 
took him thousands of hours to reap what it took him but a 
few moments to sow, to say nothing of the eternity to which he 
has gone. Tell me that a man doesn't reap more than he sows. 
It is going on all the while. Men seem to think they can 
escape God's law; they may escape man's law, but not God's. 

" Though the mills of God grind slowly. 
Yet they grind exceeding small. 
Though with patience He stands waiting, 
With exactness grinds He all." 

I was once speaking on this subject, and a man in the bal- 
cony right in front of me dropped as if he had been shot, and 
sobbed aloud. A gentleman said to him: 

" My friend, you seem to be in great trouble. Can I help 



you? " 



" No, sir, I am beyond that. No one ran help me." 
14 



2I 4 



A RUINED LIFE. 



"What is your trouble?" 

Pointing down to where I was, he said: 

" What that man said to-night is true. It takes a longer 
time to reap than to sow. Four years ago I filled a responsi- 
ble position in this city. I was a confidential clerk. One 
night, in a saloon, while under the influence of liquor, I com- 
mitted a crime. I was sent to prison, a culprit, for four years. 
I am just out. I called on my old firm to-day, and they or- 
dered me out of their place of business; they said I had dis- 
graced them, and I was never to come back to them. I have 
been up and down the streets trying to find work, and when I 
told people where I had been for the past four years they 
didn't want me. I met men who hold inferior positions to the 
one I once filled, but not one of them would return my bow." 
And he wrung his hands. 

It is all true; it takes a longer time to reap than it does to 
sow. I have been a great many years building up my char- 
acter, but I could blast it inside of an hour. It takes a long 
time to build a monument, but not long to destroy it. It 
don't take a long time to blast one's character; but it takes a 
long time to recover it, if one loses it. 

I used to swear before I was converted; it didn't seem to 
trouble me. But after I was converted if I got an oath half- 
way out I bit it in two with my teeth. It caused me more 
agony than all the oaths I had ever taken. It is an awful thing 
for a man to know these truths and then act against them. 
This truth applies to the preacher and saint as well as to the 
sinner. We have all got to reap, every one of us, and MORE 
THAN WE SOW. 

A man must reap the fruit, no matter how ignorant he may 
be, or claims to be, of the nature of the seed. Ignorance of the 
kind of seed makes no difference. If I think I am sowing 
good seed, and it is bad, I shall have a bad harvest. There- 
fore it becomes me as a rational creature and a thinking man 
to look well to the kind of seed I am sowing. 

Suppose I meet a man who is sowing seed, and I say: 



SOWING FOR TIME AND ETERNITY. 2l r 

" Hello, stranger, what are you sowing? " 

" I don't know." 

" Don't know whether it is good or bad?" 

" No, I can't tell; but it is seed, that is all I want to know, 
and I am sowing it." 

You would say that he was a first-class lunatic, wouldn't 
you? But he wouldn't be half so crazy as the man who goes 
on sowing for time and eternity and never asks himself what 
kind of seed he is sowing or what the harvest will be. Young 
man, are you letting some secret sin get the mastery over you, 
binding you hand and foot? It is growing. Every sin grows. 

Mothers, fathers, your children are coming on after you ; 
look well to the seed you are sowing. If a man could do all his 
own reaping at last, it wouldn't be so bad. But when you sin 
remember that you and your children will reap shame and dis- 
grace, and your old, white-haired parents will reap in bitter- 
ness and tears. I have seen white-haired men and women in 
agony worse than death. I don't want to see it again if I can 
help myself. And so I want to say it becomes us to look well 
to the kind of seed we are sowing. You commence very early 
with children to sow seed, and if you teach them to disobey 
God you may be sure they will disobey you. If a man will 
teach his children to curse God they will curse him. Isn't 
that so? 

I want to ask young people a question. What kind of seed 
are you sowing, good seed or bad seed? There will be a har- 
vest, and we are bound to reap, whether we want to or not. 
Tell me, how do you spend your spare time? Telling vile 
stories, polluting the minds of others while your own mind is 
also polluted? Do you read literature that makes your 
thoughts impure? How do you spend the Sabbath? Boat- 
ing, fishing, hunting, or on excursions? Do any of you think 
ministers are old fogies, or that the Bible belongs to the dark- 
ages? 

How do you treat your parents? Tf you will tell me T will 
tell you just about what kind of a harvest you are going to 



2l6 DUTIES TO PARENTS. 

have. Now, I have traveled through this world a great deal, 
and I have not traveled with my eyes shut. And I want to 
testify that I never in my life have seen a young man or young 
woman treat their parents with contempt who have ever pros- 
pered. Tell me how you treat your parents and I will tell you 
how your children will treat you. A man was making prep- 
arations to send his old father to the poorhouse, when his 
little child came up and said, " Papa, when you are old, shall 
I have to take you to the poorhouse? " If your father is living, 
treat him kindly. You will not always have him with you. If 
your mother still lingers, treat her kindly. I can't tell you the 
contempt I have for the boy who will associate with fast young 
men of the town and talk against his father and mother, and 
say they crammed religion down his throat, and that now he 
is a " free man." I think I would rather have my tongue 
cleave to the roof of my mouth than to speak in that way of 
my mother. If there is any one thing that God has given me 
in this world that I am most thankful for, it is for my godly, 
praying mother. I know that if any calamity had come to 
me, if I should be stricken down with dangerous disease, and 
she were living to-day, and the news should reach her, she 
would take the first train to come to me, and, if necessary, 
would take the disease in her own body and die for me. 

Tell me, young man, what kind of seed are you sowing? 
Are you polite to other people and peevish and cross to your 
father and mother? God forgive you if you are. A son stays 
out until one, two, or three o'clock in the morning, in gambling 
dens, and when his mother remonstrates he curses her, and in 
doing so he kills her by inches. Come, my friend, what kind 
of harvest do you expect? What kind of seed are you sowing? 
Bear in mind the reaping time is coming. I will venture to 
say there is many a man who would give all he has in the 
world if he could call his mother back and get her forgiveness. 
I was a member of the Mount Vernon Church in Boston 
with John B. Gough. I used to go to his house, and when 
he came to Chicago I used to entertain him. In later years he 



JOHN B. GOUGH'S BITTEREST MEMORY. 2 I7 

came often to my home, and but a little time before he died I 
heard him say, " If I could tear one thing from my memory 
I would willingly give my right arm." And I have always sup- 
posed it was the way he treated his mother. She could not 
stand it to see her boy going to a drunkard's grave, and her 
heart broke, and John B. Gough came to himself; but his 
mother was gone. If you are not right with your father and 
mother, get right with them at once. They will be gone by 
and by. 

A man wrote to me that this idea that one must reap just 
as he sows will do for the unconverted, but not for a man who 
has turned from his sins. But if I get drunk and break my 
right arm and that arm is amputated, though I may afterward 
become not only a temperate but a godly man, I must still go 
through life without that right arm. Suppose I send a man 
to sow ten acres of oats, and when they come up I find half 
cf them are thistles. I say, " It is the work of an enemy. 
Some one has sowed those thistles." I call the man who 
sowed the seed and say to him: 

"John, do you know anything about those thistles?" 

" Do you remember, Mr. Moody," he replies, " that two or 
three years ago you were talking with me and you told me if 
I had done wrong and I came to you and confessed it you 
would forgive me? Well, some time after that I got angry 
with you and I mixed thistle seed with the oats. There has 
not been a day since that I was not sorry; and though I could 
not face you, I now hold you to your promise of forgiveness." 

" Well, John, I will forgive you, but when you reap the 
oats you must reap the thistles along with them." 

I know what it is to reap thistles with my oats. I don't 
believe there is a minister or elder or deacon in the church 
who does not understand this. There are some things for 
which I can never forgive myself. There is not a cloud be- 
tween my soul and God this day. I have a clean testimony to 
this, but there are many things I wish T had not done. 

I know a man who deserted his wife and children, and after 



2i8 THE REMORSEFUL FUGITIVE. 

being gone for years he returned home, like the prodigal, 
and sought out his wife. She supposed he was dead, and she 
had married again; and the poor man has never seen his wife 
and children alone. He has stood on the street watching his 
children, but he never spoke to them. I believe God will for- 
give that man, but he will never forgive himself. He must 
reap the consequences of his sowing. 

Some years ago in Chicago I preached from the text, 
" Arise, go up to Bethel, and dwell there." A man came to 
me and said: 

" Can I see you alone? " 

" Yes," I said. 

He shut the door and turned the key. The perspiration 
stood in great beads on his forehead. He put his head on my 
shoulder and trembled and sobbed. I let him have it out. 
After he got control of himself I said: 

" Tell me your trouble." 

" I am a fugitive from justice. The Governor of my State, 
Missouri, has offered a reward for my apprehension. I have 
been hiding here in Chicago for months." 

He then told me the story. He had forged thousands of 
dollars' worth of county bonds and sold them. He did not 
intend to defraud; he expected to succeed in speculation, call 
the bonds in, and never be found out. But he got beyond his 
depth, and he had to flee from the city. He had disfigured and 
disguised himself all he could. He said: 

" I am away from my business, my friends and associates. 
I dare not receive a letter or write one. I have nothing to do. 
I am afraid to be out in the daytime. If I walk out I can hear 
the footsteps of an officer on my track. They tell me there's 
no hell, but it seems to me I have been in hell for months." 

" Why don't you give yourself up? Why not go back and 
face the law? " 

" Oh," he said, " I can't do that." 

" Well," I replied, " I would rather be in prison with Christ 
than outside without Him. God cannot help you until you 



RETURNING TO BEAR THE PENALTY. 2 IQ 

do the right thing." He looked me straight in the face and 
said: 

" Mr. Moody, I would rather go to prison than to suffer 
what I have suffered for the last few months. My conscience 
smites me day and night. I have been in perfect torment all 
the time. All the while it seemed as if some one would touch 
my shoulder and arrest me for the reward offered. But I have 
a wife and three children, and how can I bring this public dis- 
grace upon them? My wife is a refined woman, looked up to 
and respected. I have three beautiful children. How can I 
put this stigma upon them for life? " 

The case looked different to me then. I have a rule that 
I have carried through life. It is this: If a man comes to 
me for counsel I try to put myself in his place. When he 
spoke of his wife and children I was dumb. That is what 
makes me hate sin. You cannot alone reap its results; others 
reap and suffer with you. I said: 

" My friend, I don't know what to say. It is always safe 
to pray, pray about everything." 

I got down and prayed, and I wept, — I couldn't help it. 
I said: 

" To-morrow I will meet you at twelve o'clock." 

He was there on time. He said: 

" Mr. Moody, it's all settled. Don't trouble yourself about 
me. I am going back this afternoon to give myself up. If I 
ever meet the God of battles I must go through prison. I 
have made up my mind to do right. I ask you to do one thing 
— pray God to help me; pray for my wife and children. I 
don't know what will become of them; pray God to help me 
and them." 

I did pray, and T wept with that man. He said: 

" Don't speak of it until I am in the hands of the law. 
Little did I think it would ever come to this." 

Well, he took the train and started for Missouri. He 
arrived in his town about midnight, stole off to his home, and 
stayed there a week. His children were young, and he was 



220 AFRAID TO MEET HIS CHILDREN. 

afraid to have them know he was home lest it should get out 
and he would be arrested. He wrote me a letter that week. 
It brought tears to my eyes. He said he heard his little child 
say: 

" Mamma, doesn't papa love us any more? " 

" Why, yes, what makes you ask such a question? " 

" Why, he never left us before, and he has been gone a 
long time, and he don't write to us, and he don't send us any- 
thing, and I'm afraid he has forgotten us." 

And there the father was in the house all the time. He 
would go up and look at the children, in their innocent sleep, 
but he was afraid to kiss them, lest it should wake them up. 
Think of it! And think of the stigma, the brand he was to 
put upon them. Talk to me about sin being pleasant! 

Well, he had been at home a week. He felt as though he 
must give himself up. The last night came. He left his 
house about midnight. He wrote me how he took his wife 
to his bosom and kissed her again and again, not knowing 
whether he should ever see her again. He was afraid to kiss 
the children, but he took a long look at those dear little ones. 
Then he left his home and went across the country and arrived 
at the sheriff's house the next morning at daylight. There 
wasn't much of a trial. He went into court and plead guilty. 

Do you know, I think we ought to have a change in our 
laws, and when a man says he is guilty, then make it so much 
easier for him. Don't teach him to lie out of it. I believe 
hundreds of men in difficulty would come out at once and con- 
fess if we had that state of things. I am not much of a lawyer, 
but I tell you I believe in mercy. I want it for myself. And 
I believe that when a man does confess his wrong there is a 
kind of feeling that prompts us to forgive him and help him 
and stand by him. Not that he ought not to go to prison for 
a length of time. I believe that he ought to, but make it as 
easy as possible when a man confesses his guilt and starts to 
do right. 

The court sentenced this man to the penitentiary for nine- 



A THIEF AND PERJURER. 221 

teen years. That's the shortest time they could give him on 
the eight indictments. I went down to see him, and, although 
he had on the prison garb, I believe he was a child of God as 
much as I was. God had spoken peace to his soul. He was 
not half as agitated as he was when he came to me in Chicago. 
The cloud had lifted; the burden was gone. Thank God, we 
got him out at last and he was restored to his family. He has 
gone up on high. I expect to meet him in the kingdom of 
God. To his dying day he could never forgive himself, but 
God forgave him. 

A fine looking young man once came into the inquiry-room. 
He had been brought up in a happy home with a good father 
and mother. He had gone astray. He said he wished to be- 
come a Christian, but he could not, because he knew what it 
would make him do. He had robbed an express company, 
and that sin stood between him and God. He had been tried 
and the verdict was in his favor, but he knew he was guilty. 
He had gone into the witness-box and committed perjury. 
He went out of the inquiry-room and left the building. He 
came again, however, and I never felt so much pity for a man 
in my life. He wanted to become a Christian, but the thought 
of having to go back and tell his father that he was guilty, after 
his father had paid $2,000 to conduct his trial, deterred him. 
After a great struggle he got down on his knees and cried out, 
" O God, help me ! forgive me my sins ; " and at last he got 
up and said, " Well, sir, I will go back." A friend went down 
to the railway station and saw him off, and shortly after I got 
this telegram from him : 

" Mr. Moody — God has told me what to do. The future 
is as clear as crystal. I am happier than ever before." 

He reached his native village, and I soon received a letter 
from him that filled my soul with sympathy. Let me say here, 
if anyone has taken money from his employer, go and tell him 
of it at once. It is a good deal better for you to confess it than 
to have it on your mind, or try to cover it up. " He that 
covereth his sins shall not prosper." If you have taken any 



222 A TOUCHING LETTER. 

money that does not belong to you, make restitution by con- 
fession at least. If any one is being tempted to commit a 
forgery or any crime, let this young man's letter be a warning 
to them: 

" My Beloved Friend and Brother: I am firm in the cause. I 
have started, and feel that God is with me in it. And, oh, dear brother, 
never cease praying for my dear father and mother, and I wish you 
would some day write them and tell them that God will make this all 
for the best. If I live for ages I will never cease praying for them, and 
I never can forgive myself for my ungratefulness to my dear broken- 
hearted sisters and brothers and dear good parents. Oh, the link that 
held the once happy home is severed. O God ! may it not be forever. 
Would that I had been a Christian for life; that I had taken my mother's 
hand when a child and walked from there, hand in hand, straight to 
heaven; and then the stains would not have been. But we know, O 
God, that they can't follow me into heaven, for then I will be washed 
of all my sins, and the things that are of this earth will stay here. 

" Oh, my dear Christian brothers, my heart almost failed me when 
I was approaching my home, and thought that I was the one out of * 
eight brothers and sisters to break the chain of happiness that sur- 
rounded that once happy and beautiful home. The beautiful sunshine 
that once lit that dearest of homes is now overshadowed with darkness. 
Oh, I fear it will kill my dear parents; it is more than they can bear. 
When I reached home, and they all greeted me with a kiss, and I told 
them I had started for heaven, and God sent me home to tell them, 
my mother shed tears of happiness. But when I was forced to bring 
the death-stroke upon her the tears ceased to flow, and God only can 
describe the scene that took place. I called them all around me, and I 
thought I could not pray if I were to attempt it. But when I knelt 
with them in prayer God just told me what to say, and I found it the 
will of God; and after I had prayed I kissed them all, and asked their 
pardon for my ungratefulness, which I received from them all. Then I 
made my preparation to leave home, for how long God only knows, 
but I got grace to leave in a cheerful way, and it appeared for a short 
time; and if God lets me live to return home I will join my mother's 
side, take her to church, and bring my brothers and sisters and father 
to God. We will all go to heaven together. My beloved brother, I 
must see you some day, and just tell you what God has done for me, 
and I know he will never forsake me, when I am shut up in those prison 
walls receiving the punishment I justly deserve for my crime. When 
I can't communciate with any one else I know I will not be shut off 
from God. Oh, glory! 

" I came to Cleveland last night, and was going to get that money 
and return it to the General Superintendent, but my attorney had made 
that arrangement already. I find there is an indictment at A 



THE CONVICT'S RETURN. 



223 



against me now for perjury, and I am going to take the morning train 
and go there. Court is in progress there now, and I am going to plead 
guilty. I will write you again soon, and give you all the particulars 
and the length of my sentence." 

I want to urge this letter upon your consideration as a 
warning. Think of the punishment that young man brought 
upon himself; think of the agony of that father and mother 
when he broke the news to them — when he told them of his 
guilt. He had sowed seeds of evil, and they with him reaped 
the harvest of sorrow. 

A prominent citizen in the north of England told me a sad 
case that happened in Newcastle-on-Tyne. It was about a 
young boy, an only child. The father and mother thought 
everything of him, and did all they could for him. But he 
fell into bad ways, associated with evil companions, and finally 
with thieves. He didn't let his parents know about it. One 
night his companions prevailed upon him to break into a 
public house. They stood outside while he entered the house 
and broke into the till. He was caught, and in one short week 
he was tried, convicted, and sent for ten years to Van Dieman's 
Land. 

After his term of servitude expired he returned to his native 
land, and to the town where his mother and father used to live, 
and soon stood at the door of his old home. He had been 
gone ten years, and what a change he found there! He 
knocked, but a stranger came to the door and stared him in 
the face. " No, there's no such person lives here, and where 
your parents are I don't know," was the only greeting he re- 
ceived. Then he went down the street, asking even the chil- 
dren that he met about his family, and where they were living. 
But everybody looked blank. There, where he was born and 
brought up, he was an alien, and unknown even in his old 
haunts. 

At last he found a couple of townsmen who remembered his 
father and mother, and they told him the old house had been 
deserted long before; that he had been gone but a few months 



224 



A HARVEST OF GRIEF AND TEARS. 



when his father died broken-hearted; and that his mother had 
lost her mind. He went to the madhouse where his mother 
was, and went up to her and said: " Mother, mother, don't 
you know me? I am your son! " But she raved and struck 
him in the face and shrieked, " You are not my boy! " and then 
raved again and tore her hair. He left the asylum more dead 
than alive, and so completely broken-hearted that he died in 
a few months. Yes, the fruit was long growing, but at last it 
ripened to the harvest like a whirlwind, and vengeance made 
quick work of it. The death harvest was reaped. 

And that is true in regard not only to individuals but to 
nations. Nations are only collections of individuals, and what 
is true of a part, in regard to character, is always true of the 
whole. In this country our forefathers planted slavery in the 
face of an open Bible, and didn't we have to reap? When trfe 
harvest came, nearly half a million of our young men were 
buried, many of them in nameless graves. Didn't God make 
this nation weep in the hour of gathering the harvest, when 
we had to give up our young men, both North and South, to 
death; and almost every household had an empty chair, and 
blood, blood, blood, flowed like water for four long years? 
Ah, our nation sowed, and how in tears and groans she had 
to reap! 

Once, in speaking to His disciples, Christ spoke about 
being cast into hell, " where the worm dieth not." 

I believe the worm that dieth not is our memory; I believe 
that what will make that world of the lost so terrible to us is 
memory. We say now that we forget, and we think we do, 
but the time is coming when we will remember, and we cannot 
forget. Memory is God's officer; and when God touches its 
secret springs and says, " Son, remember," we cannot help but 
remember. When He shall say, " Son and daughter, remem- 
ber," tramp, tramp, tramp will come before us a long proces- 
sion — all the sins we have ever committed. 

I have been twice in the jaws of death. Once I was drown- 
ing-, and as I was about to sink the third time I was rescued. 



THE REAPING-TIME MUST COME. 22 S 

In the twinkling of an eye it seemed as though everything I 
had said, done, or thought of flashed across my mind. I do 
not understand how everything in a man's life can be crowded 
into his recollection in an instant of time, but nevertheless it 
all flashed through my mind. Another time when I thought 
I was dying the past all came back to me again. It is just so 
that all things we think we have forgotten will come back to 
us by and by. It is only a question of time. 

I was at the Paris Exhibition in 1867, and I noticed there 
a little oil painting, only about a foot square, called " Sowing 
the Tares." The face of the sower looked more like that of a 
demon than a man. As he sowed the tares, up came serpents 
and reptiles, and they were crawling up on his body, and all 
around were woods with wolves prowling in them. I have 
seen that picture many times since. Ah! the reaping time is 
coming. If you sow to the flesh you must reap the flesh. If 
you sow to the wind you must reap the whirlwind. You can 
decide your destiny if you will. Heaven and hell are set be- 
fore you, and you are called upon to choose. Which will you 
have? If you will accept Christ He will receive you to His 
arms. If you reject Him He will reject you. 



CHAPTER VII. 

TEMPERANCE. — TO DRUNKARDS AND REFORMED MEN. 

Bound Hand and Foot — Carried Over the Rapids — Sowing Wild 
Oats — A Thrilling Incident in Mr. Moody's Experience — Beg- 
ging for Mercy in the Dying Hour — The Drunkard's Home and 
Family — The Ragged and Filthy Tramp — "I Have Got it 
Now " — The Arrow that Reached His Heart — Remarkable 
Story of a Vagrant and Outcast — A Chicago Business Man's 
Experience — The Preacher Who Made an Impression — " Mary, 
I Wish You Would Pray for Me " — Keeping Out of Debt — 
Working for Twenty-five Cents a Week — "That's the Man for 
Me " — Praying to God for More — "I Guess I'll Reform Too " — 
Three Hundred Cords of Wood and a Lot of Sawbucks — Drink- 
ing Up a Coat — " Mike, Where are your Shoes? " — Waiting For 
Something to Turn Up — Singing Hymns in Haunts of Vice — 
Taking Sixteen Men Out of a Saloon in One Night. 

THERE was not a day that some poor captive did not 
come to our meetings bound hand and foot with the 
chains of intemperance. Some of them said, " Oh, I'm 
all right"; others said, "I'll come 'round all right in a little 
while "; and some said, " I took the pledge, and broke it, and 
kept on drinking until the habit became a cord that bound me 
to intemperance; and the cord became a chain, and now I can- 
not break away from it." Thank God, I can proclaim the 
good news that Christ can deliver you from all your sins. I 
don't care if you are bound hand and foot with sin. He will 
save you if you only come to Him. 

How many young men there are whose characters have 
been blasted by strong drink. How many brilliant men have 
gone down to death through it. Some of the noblest states- 
men, some of the most brilliant orators and men of all profes- 
sions, have been borne to a drunkard's grave. Many men say, 
" I am not going down to a drunkard's grave." They think 

(226) 



THE RESISTLESS CURRENT. 



227 



they have sufficient strength of will to stop drinking when they 
choose. When strong drink gets a firm hold there is nothing 
within us by which we can save ourselves. God alone can give 
you power to resist the cup of temptation. He alone can give 
you power to overcome its influence. 

Look at that man in a boat on Niagara River. He is only 
a mile from the rapids. A man on the bank of the river shouts 
to him: 

'' Young man, the rapids are not far away, you'd better 
pull for the shore." 

" You attend to your own business; I will take care of my- 
self," he replies. 

Now he has got a little nearer, and another man on the 
bank sees his danger, and shouts: 

" Stranger, you'd better pull for the shore; there's danger 
ahead, and if you go further you'll be lost. You can save your- 
self now if you pull in." 

" Mind your own business; I'll take care of myself." 

On he goes. I can see him in the boat enjoying himself 
and laughing at the danger. Another man on the bank is 
looking at him, and he lifts up his voice and cries: 

" Stranger, stranger, the rapids are below you ; pull quick 
for the shore; if you don't, you will lose your life; " and the 
young man laughs at him — mocks him. By and by the 
young man says: 

" I think I hear the rapids — yes, I hear them roar; " and 
he seizes his oars and pulls with all his strength, but the current 
is too swift. Nearer and nearer he is drawn to the brink of 
that awful abyss, until with one unearthly cry, over he goes. 

Ah, my friends, this is the case with hundreds. They are 
in the current of riches, of pleasure, of drink, that will take 
them to the whirlpool. Satan has them blindfolded, and they 
are on the road to destruction. 

Think of the lost souls in the saloons and gambling dens — 
young men who are noble, who might be jewels that would 
sparkle in the Saviour's crown for eternity, and yet Satan is 



228 THE DYING DRUNKARD. 

taking them bodily down to death. Is it not written that 
drunkards shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Is God 
true or not? If any man tells you that a drunkard can reel 
into Heaven, tell him he is a liar. Heaven would be as cor- 
rupt as earth if that were possible. 

We hear some young men say in a jesting way, " Oh, we 
are only sowing our wild oats; we will get over this by and by." 
I have seen men reap their wild oats. I remember I went 
home one night and found my household in alarm. They had 
seen a man come running down the street, and as he ap- 
proached the house he gave an unearthly scream, and in 
terror they bolted the door. He came right up to the front 
door, and instead of ringing the bell, he tried to push the door 
in. They asked him what he wanted, and he said he wanted 
to see me. They told him I was at the meeting, and away he 
ran, and they could hear his screams and groans as he disap- 
peared. I was coming along the street, and he shot past me 
like an arrow. But he had seen me, and he turned and seized 
me by the arm, saying eagerly: 

" I have got to die to-night. Can I be saved? The devil 
is coming to me at one o'clock to-night." 

" My friend, you are mistaken," I said. 

I thought the man was sick. But he persisted that the 
devil had come and laid his hand upon him, and told him 
that he might have till one o'clock that night. I said: 

" He will not come after you." 

" He will; there's no chance of my getting away from him. 
He is coming! Won't you go up to my house and sit 
with me? " 

I couldn't convince him, so I persuaded some friends to go 
to his house and look after him. At one o'clock that night the 
devils came into his room, and the six men there could not 
hold him. He screamed, 

" Look there ! See them ! There they are ! They are after 
me! He is taking me! He is going to take me to hell! He 
is after me! " 



THE RUMSELLER'S PUNISHMENT. 



229 



He was reaping what he had sown. When Death came 
and laid his icy hand upon him, Oh, how he cried for mercy — 
how he besought pardon. Ah, yes, young men, you may say, 
in a jesting way, that you are " sowing your wild oats," but 
the reaping time is coming. 

Look at that rumseller. When we talk to him he laughs 
at us. He tells us there is no hell, no future, no retribution. 
I remember one saloon keeper who ruined nearly all the young 
men in his neighborhood. Mothers and fathers went to him 
and begged him not to sell their sons liquor. He told them it 
was his business to sell liquor, and that he was going to sell 
it to every one who wanted it. His saloon was a foul blot as 
dark as hell upon the place. But he had a son, and a father's 
heart. He didn't worship God, but he worshiped that boy. 
He didn't remember that whatsoever a man sows, that shall 
he reap. Time rolled on, and that young man became a slave 
to drink, and his life became such an intolerable burden to him- 
self that he put a revolver to his head and blew out his brains. 
The father lived a few years longer, but his life was full of 
bitterness, and he went down to his grave in sorrow. My 
friends, we generally reap what we sow. The reaping may not 
come soon, but it will surely come. If you ruin other men's 
sons, some other man will ruin yours. Bear in mind God is 
a God of equity; He is a God of justice. He is not going to 
permit you to ruin other men and then escape yourself. 

Y01.1 are doing the devil's work when you rejoice at a 
man's fall instead of trying to raise him up. Go to work and 
get him away from the devil if you can. When the devil gets 
a man down, a good many try to help the devil to keep him 
down. Because a man has fallen again it is no sign that he 
has not been reclaimed. A man came into one of our meet- 
ings who was not only a tramp, but he had sunk about as low 
as any tramp could go. His will power was gone. He had 
nothing but rags to cover his nakedness. He was as filthy and 
as far gone as any man T have ever seen. He remained after 
the second meeting, and some friends prayed with him. He 



230 



THE HOPELESS RECLAIMED. 



said, " Jesus won't answer my prayer, I am too great a sinner." 
He afterwards told me that after the first meeting he had a 
fifteen-cent scrip* in his pocket, and he said, " If the Lord will 
help me keep that piece of scrip twenty-four hours without 
spending it for whiskey I will regard it as a token that He will 
answer my prayer." He had no place to sleep, so he walked 
the streets of New York for the next twenty-four hours. I 
met him sometime afterwards and asked him how he was get- 
ting along; and all he said was, " I have got it now." The last 
time I heard from him he said, " I have got it now." He 
hadn't spent it for whiskey. He said he intended to keep that 
piece cf currency as long as he lived. That shows how God 
can save the poor drunkard. 

In Philadelphia, at one of our meetings, a drunken man 
arose. Until that' time I had no faith that a man could be 
converted while intoxicated. This drunken man got up and 
shouted, " I want to be prayed for." His friends tried to quiet 
him, but he only shouted louder " I want to be prayed for," 
and three times he repeated his request. His call was attended 
to, and he was converted. God has power to convert a man 
even when he is drunk. 

I have still another lesson. I met a man in New York who 
was an earnest worker, and I asked him to tell me his ex- 
perience. He said he had been a drunkard for over twenty 
years. His parents had forsaken him, and his wife had left 
him. He went into a lawyer's office in Poughkeepsie, mad 
with drink. The lawyer proved to be a good Samaritan, and 
reasoned with him and told him he could be saved. The man 
scouted the idea. He said: " I must be pretty low when my 
father and mother, my wife and kindred, have cast me orr"; 
there is no hope for me here or hereafter." But this good 
Samaritan showed him how it was possible to secure salvation, 
and he got him on his feet, and guided him, and he was saved. 
He said to me: "I have not touched a drop of liquor since." 
He became leader of a young men's meeting in New York. 



* Fractional Currency issued by the Government during the Civil War. 



FINDING A FRIEND. 



231 



I asked him to come up to my native town, where there were a 
good many drunkards, thinking he might encourage them to 
seek salvation. He came and brought a young man with him. 
They held a meeting, and it seemed as if the power of God 
rested upon that meeting when these two men told what God 
had done for them — how He had destroyed the work of the 
devil in their hearts, and brought peace and happiness to 
their souls. 

A man who was induced to come into one of our meetings 
in Chicago slipped out and didn't come back. Some friends 
found out his name, and went to the saloon where he made his 
headquarters, but could not find him; they went there a num- 
ber of times, and at last they left a card for him, which was 
headed, " My dear friend." He was a miserable drunkard; his 
friends had left him and he was sinking rapidly into a drunk- 
ard's grave; he thought that his end was near, and he had 
given himself up to die. When he entered the saloon the little 
card headed " My dear friend " was handed to him. 

" Why," he said, sarcastically, " this is singular, I've got a 
friend." He read on: 

" If you will come up to the hotel to-night at seven o'clock, 
I should like to see you." 

He read it again, and said: 

" But I have no real friend, and I don't understand what 
this expression, ' My dear friend,' means." He said it went 
like an arrow into his heart and burned into his very soul, to 
think that some one should address him as " My dear friend." 
While drunk he had fallen in the street and his face was badly 
bruised. He was so ashamed of himself that he tried to get 
some one to go to the hotel for him. But he found that he 
hadn't many friends — drunkards don't have many — and he 
had to go himself. When he arrived at the hotel he was 
ashamed to go in, so he watched from behind a post until he 
saw a man whom he had seen come out of the Tabernacle, and 
whom he thought might be the man who had sent for him. 
Approaching him he said: * 



232 



HOPE FOR THE INEBRIATE. 



" Is your name Hawley?" 

" Yes," was the reply, " I have been looking for you, and I 
want you to come down to the Tabernacle." 

" You do; well, I won't go to the Tabernacle." 

"Why not?" 

" I have got a black eye, the skin is broken on my nose, I 
am dirty and disfigured, and I won't go." 

" But I want you to go." 

The man replied that he could not go, for he had become 
so much of a slave to liquor that he couldn't sit an hour in a 
meeting without going out to get a drink. At last he was per- 
suaded to go in, and he took a seat behind a post. He went 
into the inquiry-room, and that very night the Spirit of God 
met him, and he became one of the leading men in the city. 
He not only brought his friends to Christ, but he went into 
other towns telling every one what great things the Lord had 
done for him. God went down to the very gates of hell to save 
that man. 

So let us tell drunkards there is hope; let us tell them that 
the Son of man was made manifest to destroy their appetites, 
and that He can and will take them away. He can destroy 
their taste for liquor, and when that is done the saloons will 
soon be closed. 

In one of our temperance meetings in Chicago a business 
man arose and told a most remarkable story. He said that 
eight years before, he was a confirmed drunkard ; his father, 
who died a drunkard, used to give him liquor when he was a 
little boy of four years; his friends had forsaken him; he had 
been taken into court and sent to jail as a vagrant; his only 
fear was that the police would get hold of him ; his only ambi- 
tion was to keep out of the hands of the law and to drink liquor 
all day and sleep at night wherever he could. One night he 
went down to the lake shore, and a terrible storm arose, and 
for the first time in his life he cried to God to help him. He 
said, " My friends, although a vagrant and an outcast, God 
met me there on the lake shore; He took hold of my right hand 



WAITING AND WATCHING. 



235 



and I have never had any taste for liquor since; He has kept 
me for eight years." Now, I believe that God destroyed that 
man's appetite for liquor, root and branch. 

When we were in Chicago, a St. Louis merchant, staying 
in the city on business, heard that we were trying to reach and 
reform drinking men ; and he thought he would try to induce 
a friend, who was a hard drinker, to come to the meeting. 
The man had not been to a meeting for twenty years. For 
six months he had been studying the Gospel of John, and try- 
ing to prove that it ought not to be in the Bible. He had 
settled it in his own mind that it ought not to be there. He 
went to the meeting and there he heard this hymn sung: 

" When my final farewell to the world I have said, 

And gladly lie down to my rest; 
When softly the watchers shall say, ' He is dead/ 

And fold my pale hands o'er my breast; 
And when, with my glorified vision at last 

The walls of ' That City ' I see, 
Will any one then at the beautiful gate, 

Be Waiting and Watching for me? " 

He wondered if anyone was waiting and watching for him. 
He went out of the meeting, but he could not get that " Wait- 
ing and Watching " out of his head. He went to the hotel and 
ate dinner, and all the time he kept saying to himself, " I 
wonder if anybody is waiting and watching for me." He 
tossed on his bed all night, and finally got up, and knelt down 
and prayed for the first time in his life. He prayed that Christ 
would have mercy on him. He said, " Lord Jesus Christ, take 
me in Thine arms." God heard his prayer, and he became one 
of the best workers we had, and led many souls to Christ. 

There are people who tell us there are no miracles that 
cannot be explained by natural causes. They try to prove 
that all the miracles Christ performed were done by a sort of 
sleight-of-hand performance; that nothing supernatural oc- 
curred while Christ was upon earth. I should like to have 
a man explain how the water was turned to wine; in fact, 
I should like to have some one explain how He performed all 



236 EVERY-DAY MIRACLES. 

these miracles if they were not supernatural. I think that we 
are having miracles now just as wonderful as those which 
Christ performed when He was on earth. In one of our meet- 
ings a man stated that he had been a confirmed drunkard for 
thirty years, and that God had taken away his appetite for 
strong drink. His face shone as he told what God had done 
for him. The conversion of that man I considered super- 
natural. I should like to have a man explain how such a thing 
is done by natural causes. I know there are a great many 
who doubt these witnesses. If a man had told me years ago 
that a man could be a drunkard for thirty or forty years, and 
then could have his appetite taken away from him, I should 
have doubted his word. I have always believed that God 
could save a drunkard, but I believed that he had to carry that 
appetite down to the grave; but God, I find, is going to destroy 
the works of the devil, and this appetite for strong drink is 
one of the devil's works. Taking away a man's appetite for 
drink is supernatural work, and that is what God does. 

Let us take the case of a drunkard who has heard of the 
saving power of God. I think a drunkard's home is about the 
darkest spot on earth; I think it is about as near hell as you 
can get in this world. In heathen countries I have visited I 
haven't found anything darker than a home in a civilized land 
where there is a drunken father; I believe a drunken father and 
a drunkard's home is the curse of curses. A drunkard is a 
slave; when he would break away from liquor an unseen power 
drags him on; when he would push forward, there is a power 
that holds him back. Many and many a time he has tried to 
break away from strong drink ; but at last the simple truth 
reaches him, and he hears that all he has to do is to look to 
Jesus Christ for salvation, deliverance, and redemption. He 
begins to wake up and he says, " I wonder if it is true that I 
can be delivered from the power of strong drink? 'As Moses 
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of 
man be lifted up, that whosoever ' — ' Whosoever ' — that 
means me; it means everv drunkard. 'WHOSOEVER' — 



"HE CAME TO SAVE ME." 



237 



Thank God for the sweep in that text. Can I be saved from a 
drunkard's grave and a drunkard's hell, and once more lift up 
my head in society? Can my children look up to me once 
more and speak to me respectfully? That would be a wonder- 
ful transformation! I wonder if it is all true? " 

He goes home to his wife and asks: 

" Mary, have we a Bible in the house? " 

" Oh, John," Mary says, " I hope you are not going to take 
my mother's Bible from me; it is the only thing I have left that 
mother gave me. When she died she said, ' Mary, there are 
untold treasures hidden in that Book, and I want you to keep 
it.' Oh, John, don't pawn it! You took my wedding ring 
and sold it for whiskey, and you have sold almost everything 
else for whiskey; but you are not going to sell my mother's 
Bible for whiskey, are you?" 

" No," says John, " I don't want to pawn it; just go and 
get it." 

And she brings the Bible, and John says: 

" I wish you would find the third chapter of the Gospel of 
John." 

She finds the place at last, and begins to read; and when 
she gets along down to the fourteenth verse, John stops her 
and says: 

" Just read that again, carefully." And she reads it again. 

" Mary," says John, " I thought Jesus Christ came into the 
world to condemn me, because I am a drunkard, because I am 
a poor sinner. I have condemned myself; my children have 
condemned me; my father has condemned me; my mother has 
condemned me; but I read there for the first time that Jesus 
Christ didn't come to condemn me, He came to save me." It 
began to dawn upon him that God sent His Son that he might 
be delivered. 

"Mary, can you pray?" 

" Well, John, I used to know how to pray, but when things 
got so bad, I became discouraged and gave up praying." 

"Won't you try? I want you to pray for me." 



238 A WONDERFUL TRANSFORMATION. 

And I see the poor drunkard and his wife get down on their 
knees, and she tries to pray that God will deliver him. Then 
John tries to pray; he can't pray very well, but it is an honest 
cry for mercy. The greatest drunkard will be heard, if there 
is an honest cry for help; in prayer he is looking away from 
man to a higher source; he is looking to God, who has 
almighty power. After a while he says: 

" Mary, I never had such a feeling in my heart as I have 
now; " and he kisses his wife. It is a long time since he kissed 
her, and the dear woman begins to think how happy she was 
when she first married him. 

The next morning he repeats that prayer; they wake up the 
children, and the children can't understand it; they have been 
used to hearing him curse and swear, and now he is talking 
about religion, and praying. He speaks kindly to the chil- 
dren, and they can hardly believe their senses. He goes out 
and finds work that brings him in a dollar. He passes the 
saloon on his way home, but he does not go in. God has kept 
him all day, and no Rothschild ever felt so rich as when he 
went home with that dollar for his family. 

Go into that home six months hence, and the place is trans- 
formed. The rags are gone from the windows, the old broken 
furniture is gone, and new has taken its place. The wife has 
grown ten years younger, and is happy and cheerful. After 
supper he sings the old hymn, 

" Just as I am without one plea. 
But that Thy blood was shed for me; 
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee; 
Oh, Lamb of God, I come." 

The misery and woe and the curses of the drunkard are gone 
forever, and songs of Zion are sung in that home. Thank 
God! that is taking place all over our land. 



The first duty of a reformed man is to take care of his 
family. Your money belongs at home. Tf your wife has had a 
hard struggle, and you have been squandering your money in 



SOME PRACTICAL ADVICE. 



24I 



saloons and rumshops, you want to take it home now; your 
aim should be to make your home just as comfortable for your 
dear ones as you possibly can. Clothe your children, and 
don't let them be hooted at on the street as children of a 
drunkard. Give them comfortable clothes and a comfortable 
home. 

Now, here is a question that has been asked: " Ought a 
man to pay his liquor bills after he is converted?" " Render 
unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's." If you want to have 
any influence with these rumsellers, go and pay your bills. If 
you owe a liquor bill, the mistake is made; you never ought to 
have contracted the bill, but you must go and pay the debt. 
We have a right to go into debt for only one thing, and that is 
love. I believe that a great many people are suffering a thou- 
sand times more than they would if they had not run into debt, 
not only for liquor, but for other things. 

If you will take my advice, you will keep out of debt. If 
friends want to advance money to help you, tell them you 
won't have it. I would rather have twenty-five cents that I 
have earned by the sweat of my brow than twenty-five dollars 
that I have borrowed, and which I shall have to pay back. 
Work your own way up to the top of the ladder and you are 
likely to stay there; but if you are lifted up there you will be all 
the time tumbling back and you will get disheartened and dis- 
couraged. It may be that it will take years for some of you 
to pay your debts; but if your hearts are right, and your pur- 
pose right, and you mean to pay your bills, and do pay them 
just as soon as you can, that is just as acceptable to God as if 
you paid them all at once. If reformed men are deeply in 
debt, and they have not a penny to pay with, their creditors 
must wait. 

I have great confidence in men who profess to be re- 
claimed, if they show a disposition to go to work. That is a 
very sure sign of reformation. If you cannot get as much for 
your work as you think you ought to have, get whatever you 
can. But some of these men have not done anything for years 



2^2 GETTING A FOOTHOLD. 

but drink liquor, and they are not fit for much at first. It is 
difficult to get them situations, and if we do succeed-in getting 
them work they ought to take it and thank God for it. If it is 
not what you like, thank God that it is something. Some- 
thing is a good deal better than nothing. There was a con- 
verted man in Chicago who could not get the kind of work he 
wanted, but he found a man who would board him and give 
him twenty-five cents a week. He accepted the offer and went 
to work. Twenty-five cents a week! Well, that wasn't much, 
but he got his board, and that was a good deal. Pretty soon a 
business man heard of it, and he said, " That's the man for me; 
that is just the man I want; " and he hired him and gave him 
four dollars a day. There is many a man who will help you 
up if you will show a disposition to help yourselves. You 
must be such true men, and so helpful to your employers that 
they cannot get along without you, and then you will work 
up, and your employer will increase your wages. If a man 
works in the interest of his employer he will be sure to keep 
him and treat him well; but if he only works for money and 
don't take any interest in his employer's business, he will soon 
let him go. They can get any number of such men ; but when 
they get hold of a man that takes a real interest in his work he 
cannot be spared, for such men are scarce. If you cannot earn 
more than a dollar a week, earn that. That is better than 
nothing, and you can pray to God for more. 

If you are looking for work do not beg. Ask for some- 
thing to do. Your meals will taste a good deal sweeter when 
you have earned them by the sweat of your brow. There was 
one good thing about the prodigal son, he would not beg, and 
he would not steal. He would not even steal the swine's food. 
That is the kind of men we want now. If you will not beg or 
steal, men will respect and help you. What we want to-day is 
true men, and if people find that you are a true man, they will 
make room for you. It may be hard to get the first foothold, 
but if you hold right on, God will open a way for you, and, if 
need be, send down a legion of angels to help you. 



PRETENDED CONVERTS. 



243 



" What would you do with a man that would not work? " 
I think Paul has it right: " If any would not work, neither 
should he eat." I think we are doing men a great injury if we 
continue to help them when they won't work. Some of these 
men have professed Christ, but there is a difference between 
conversion and being born of God; being regenerated. We 
are living in days of sham — and sometimes when these men 
see that others are getting food and new clothes, they say: 
" Those fellows are making a good thing out of it; I guess I'll 
reform, too." 

When I was President of the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation in Chicago men were coming in all the time for work. 
They would tell harrowing tales about their suffering, how 
they had no work, and how much they wanted help. At last 
I got two or three hundred cords of wood and put it in a vacant 
lot, and I got a lot of saws and sawbucks and kept them out of 
sight. When a man came in and asked for help, I would say: 

" Why don't you work? " 

" Can't get any." 

" Would you work if you could get it? " 

" Oh, yes, I'd work at anything." 

" Would you really work in the street? " 

" Yes." 

"Would you saw wood?" 

" Yes." 

"All right." 

Then we would bring out a saw and a sawbuck and send 
him out into the lot, but we would send a boy to watch him, to 
see that he didn't steal the saw. By and by the fellow would 
say: 

" I guess I'll go home and tell my wife I have got some 
work," and that would be the last we would see of him. 

That whole winter I never got more than three or four 
cords of wood sawed. 

If you are always showering money on these shiftless men, 
and giving them food and clothing, they will live in idleness. 



244 



NO CHARITY FOR THE LAZY. 



and not only ruin themselves, but their children. It is not 
charity at all to help them when they will not work. If a man 
will not work, let him starve. I never heard of their really 
starving to death. I had charge of relief work in Chicago for 
a number of years, and I was brought into contact with a good 
many of these lazy men, and I say there is no hope of a man 
who will not work. Talk about their conversion — it is often 
only just put on to get a little money without work. This is 
the class we have so much difficulty with in large cities. 

I knew one of these men in Chicago who did not drink, but 
he was always poor. What kept him down I could not tell. 
He had five children. I do not believe his furniture was worth 
five dollars, and he had no beds. One cold day he came to 
see me. He said the landlord had put his family out on the 
prairie. I said : 

" McDonald, you are a mystery to me; I have known you 
for years; what do you do with your money? I begin to think 
you are lazy." 

" I think you hit it there," he said. 

" Well, you must go," I said. " I pity your wife and chil- 
dren, but I am not going to take care of a lazy man like you 
all winter." 

" That's pretty hard," he said. 

" I know it is, but I can't help it." 

That was in the morning. About five o'clock in the after- 
noon he came back. He asked for a place for his children to 
sleep. He knew I wouldn't let those children stay out all 
night; he knew he had me. I said: 

" What have you been doing all day? " 

He used a great many big words, and said he had been 
studying the philosophy of pauperism! 

We have got to take care of the children; but these able- 
bodied lazy men, if they will not work, must starve. 

A man once said to me that he didn't believe there was any 
love at all; that Christians professed to have love, but he 
didn't believe they ought to have two coats. I think he re- 



EVILS OF PROMISCUOUS CHARITY. 245 

fleeted on me, because I had on my overcoat at the time, and 
he hadn't got any. I looked at him and said: " Suppose I 
should give you one of my coats, you would pawn it for drink 
before sundown. I love you too much to give you my coat 
and have you drink it up." A good many people complain 
that Christians don't have the love they ought to have for their 
fellow men; but I tell you it is no sign of want of love that we 
don't love the downright lazy man. 

Some years ago I picked up several children in Chicago, 
and thought I would clothe and feed them; and I took special 
interest in those boys, to see what I could make of them. I 
don't believe it was thirty days before the clothes I had given 
them had all gone for whiskey; the fathers had drank them up. 
One day I met one of these little fellows, for whom I had 
bought a pair of shoes only the day before. It was beginning 
to snow, and he was barefooted. 

" Mike," said I, " how's this? Where are your shoes? " 

" Father and mother took them away," said he. 

There it was; the shoes had probably been drunk up. 
There is a good deal of promiscuous charity that really does 
a great deal of mischief; and people must not think, because 
we don't give them money to aid them in their poverty, that we 
don't love them. I believe if the prodigal son could have got 
all the money he wanted in that foreign country he would 
never have returned home. It was a good thing for him that 
he got hard up, and had to live on the husks that the swine 
ate. It is a good thing that people should suffer. If lazy men 
get a good living without work, they will never work. God 
has decreed that man shall earn his bread by the sweat of his 
brow, and not live on other people. A good many men are 
always waiting for something to turn up, instead of going out 
and turning up something — looking for it and finding it. 

Let those men who have been drunkards just set out and 
work among their old friends. No man can reach a drunkard 
better than one who has been a drunkard himself. 

I don't know any work so blessed as going into saloons 



246 GOSPEL SONGS IN A SALOON. 

and preaching the gospel there. If drunkards will not come to 
church, go down where they are, in the name of our God, and 
you will reach them. If you say, " Oh, they will put me out," 
I say, " No, I have never been turned out of a saloon in my 
life." Go down in a saloon where there are thirty or forty men 
playing cards and drinking, and ask them if they don't want to 
hear a little singing. They will probably say: 

" Yes, we don't mind vour singing." 

"Well, what kind of music will you have?" And prob- 
ably they will ask you to sing a comic song. 

" But we don't know how to sing comic songs. Wouldn't 
you like to have us sing the ' Star Spangled Banner,' or ' My 
Country, 'tis of Thee?" 

And so you sing " My Country, 'tis of Thee," and by and 
by they stop playing cards to listen. 

" Now, boys, wouldn't you like to have us sing a hymn our 
mothers taught us when we were boys?" 

And then you sing 

" There is a fountain filled with blood, 
Drawn from Immanuel's veins; 
And sinners plunged beneath that flood 
Lose all their guilty stains." 

Or sing " Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me," and it won't be long 
before hats will come off, and those men will remember how 
their mothers used to sing hymns to them, and the tears will 
run down their cheeks; and soon you can read to them a few 
verses out of the Bible, and pray with them, and you will be 
having a prayer-meeting there before you know it. We took 
sixteen out of a saloon in that way one night, and nine of them 
went into the inquiry-room. If these men will not come out 
to hear the glorious Gospel of the Son of God, let us carry it 
into saloons and wretched homes. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE INFINITE LOVE OF GOD. 

A Business Man's Novel Suggestion — A Touching Incident — The 
Motto in Gas-jets — The Most Beautiful Thing in the World — 
An Incident in Mr. Moody's Dublin Experience — What Changed 
Mr. Moody's Ideas about Preaching — - Sentenced to Death — A 
Mother's Anguish — A Son's Untimely End — Asking to be Laid 
Beside her Dead Boy — Seeking the California Gold Fields — 
No Room in the Lifeboats — Remarkable Instance of a Mother's 
Love — " Tell Your Father I Died to Save You" — A Father's 
Search for His hissing Son — How He was Found in San Fran- 
cisco — Story of the Boys Who were forbidden to Climb Trees — 
The Little Dirty Chimney-sweep — Clasped to His Mother's 
Bosom — Mr. Spurgeon and the Weather-vane. 

I WAS once erecting a building in Chicago for workingmen, 
and a business man said to me, " I would like to put up 
a text on the wall of that building." I supposed he was 
going to put up a motto in fine fresco. But I soon found the 
gas-fitter was working back of the pulpit. 
" What are you doing? " I said. 

" Putting in gas jets," he replied. And, to my amazement, 
I found he was putting up the motto " GOD IS LOVE," in 
gas jets so that it was impossible to light the church without 
lighting that text. 

One night a man was going by and he saw the gas-lighted 
text " GOD IS LOVE," and he said to himself " God is love," 
" God is love." By and by he came back, and he looked at it 
again. I saw him come in and take a seat by the door. Soon 
he put his hands up to his face, and once in a while I would see 
tears running down his cheeks, and I was foolish enough to 
think they were caused by my preaching. I went to him and 
said: 

(249) 



250 



THE TEXT IN LETTERS OF LIGHT. 



"What is the trouble?" 

" I don't know." 

" What was there in the sermon that made you cry?" 

" I didn't know you had been preaching." 

" Well, what was it that troubled you; was it anything in 
the songs? " 

" I don't know anything about the songs." 

" Well," I said, " what is the matter? " 

" That text up there," he replied. 

" My man," I said, " believe that God loves you." 

" I am not worth loving." 

" That's true," I said, " but He loves you all the more." 
And I sat there a half-hour, and the truth of God's love shone 
into his soul and he became a new man. 

If I thought I could make the world believe that God is love 
I would have only that one text, and I would go up and down 
the earth trying to counteract what Satan has been telling men 
— that God is not love. He has made the world believe it 
effectually. It would not take twenty-four hours to make the 
world come to God if you could only make them believe that 
God is love. 

There was a time when I preached that God hated the 
sinner, and that He was after every poor sinner with a double- 
edged sword, ready to hew him down. But I have changed 
my ideas upon this point. I will tell you how. 

When I was preaching in Dublin a young man who did 
not look over seventeen, though he was really older, said he 
would like to go back to America with me and preach the 
Gospel. I thought he could not preach it, and I put him off 
by saying it was undecided when I should go back. After I 
arrived at Chicago I received a letter from him saying he had 
just arrived at New York, and he would like to come and 
preach for me. I wrote him a cold letter, asking him to call 
on me if he ever came West. A few days after, I received a 
letter stating that he would be in Chicago on the next Thurs- 
day. I didn't know what to do with him. I said to the offi- 



SEVEN SERMONS FROM ONE TEXT. 



251 



cers of the church: " There is a man coming from England, 
and he wants to preach for me. I am going to be absent on 
Thursday and Friday. If you will let him preach on those days 
I will be back on Saturday and take him off your hands." 

On my return on Saturday I was anxious to hear how the 
people liked him, and I asked my wife how that young Eng- 
lishman got along. She said, " They liked him very much. 
He preaches a little different from what you do. He tells sin- 
ners that God loves them." I said he was wrong. I thought 
I could never like a man who preached contrary to what I was 
preaching. On Saturday night I went down to hear him, but 
I had made up my mind not to like him. He announced his 
text, — and I saw that everybody had brought their Bibles 
with them. " Now," he said, " if you will turn to the third 
chapter of John and the sixteenth verse, you will find my text." 
He preached a wonderful sermon from the text, " For God 
so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have ever- 
lasting life." My wife had told me he had preached the two 
previous sermons from the same text, and I noticed the audi- 
ence smiled when he read it. Instead of preaching that God 
was behind them with a double-edged sword ready to hew 
them down, he told them how God wanted every sinner to be 
saved, and how He loved them. I could not keep back my 
tears. It was wonderful how he brought out Scripture. He 
went from Genesis to Revelation, and preached that in all ages 
God loved the sinner. 

On Sunday night a great crowd came to hear him. He 
preached his fourth sermon from that wonderful text, " For 
God so loved the world," etc., and he went from Genesis to 
Revelation to show that it was love, love, LOVE that brought 
Christ from Heaven, that made Him step from the throne to 
lift up this poor, fallen world. He struck a higher chord that 
night, and it was glorious. 

The next night there was an immense crowd present, and 
he said: "Turn to the third chapter and sixteenth verse of 
16 



252 THE GLORIOUS GOSPEL OF LOVE. 

John; " and he preached his fifth sermon from that text. He 
did not divide the text up into firstly, secondly, and thirdly, 
but he preached from it as a whole. The whole church was 
on fire with enthusiasm before the week was over. 

Tuesday night came, and there was a greater crowd pres- 
ent than ever. The preacher said: " Turn to the third chap- 
ter of John and the sixteenth verse and you will find my text." 
They thought that sermon was better than any of the rest. It 
seemed as if every heart was on fire, and sinners came pressing 
into the kingdom of God. On Wednesday night people 
thought that probably he would change his text, and there was 
great excitement to hear what he was going to say. He stood 
before us again and said: " My friends, I have been trying to 
get a new text, but I cannot find any as good as the old one, 
so we will again turn to the third chapter of John and the six- 
teenth verse." He preached his seventh sermon from that 
wonderful text. 

I have never forgotten those nights. I have preached a 
different gospel since, and I have had more power with God 
and man since then. In closing up that seventh sermon he 
said: " For seven nights I have been trying to tell you how 
much God loved you, but this poor stammering tongue of 
mine will not let me. If I could ascend Jacob's ladder and 
ask Gabriel, who stands in the presence of the Almighty, to tell 
me how much love God the father has for this poor lost world, 
all that Gabriel could say would be, ' God so loved the world, 
that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever be- 
lieveth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' ' 

He went to Europe and returned again. In the meantime 
our church had been burned, and a temporary building had 
been erected. When he returned he preached in this building, 
and said: "Although the old building is burnt up, the old 
text is not burnt up, and we will preach from that." So he 
preached from where he had left off before, about the love 
of God. 

The deepest, strongest human tie is a mother's love for 



TRUE MOTHER LOVE. 



253 



her child. It is possible to separate a man from his wife, or 
a father from his son, and there may be in the wide world 
something that will separate a mother from her own child. 
There are drunken mothers who turn against their own off- 
spring; mothers so steeped in sin that they abuse or forsake 
their own children; but a true mother will never give up her 
child. And so the Bible says, " Can a mother forget her 
child?" She may. But God says "Yet will I not forget 
thee." God's love is higher, deeper, and broader than a 
mother's love. Love always descends. A mother loves more 
than the child can love the mother. I used to tell my mother 
when I climbed up on her knee, " I love you more than you 
do me." Mother would say, " It is impossible," and I doubted 
her. But when I became a father, and my boy said the same 
to me I realized what my mother felt, and I, too, said, " It is 
impossible." 

Dr. Goodell once told me of a boy who used to go to school 
with him. His father was a very bad man, and seemed to 
take delight in teaching the boy every kind of vice and sin, 
until he became so bad that the Goodell boys were forbidden 
to play with him. It was not long before the boy's father 
died, and the lad went from bad to worse, until, at last, he was 
arrested for murder. He turned out to be the worst criminal 
that Vermont ever had. He had killed five persons. When 
he was on trial for his life his mother was in the court 
room, and she took in every word that was said against her 
son, and it seemed to hurt her far more than it did him. And 
men wondered how she could love such a demon. She could 
not help it. God planted the mother-love in her heart. When 
the verdict of " Guilty " was brought in it seemed as if she 
would faint away; and when the judge pronounced the sen- 
tence of death she was frantic with grief. She seemed to feel 
it far more than her boy. When the sheriff put him in a cold, 
damp cell the mother put her arms around him and they had 
to take the boy from her by force. She traveled the length and 
breadth of Vermont trying to get influential men to sign a 



254 



LOVE FOR THE UNWORTHY 



petition for his reprieve. The clay before the execution she 
saw him for the last time. The supreme moment at length 
arrived, and when the boy was hanged she begged for the 
body that she might put it in the old burial plot, where she 
could plant flowers upon the grave and water them with her 
tears. The Governor said " No." The law of the State re- 
quired the boy's body to be buried in the prison yard. And 
the mother, when dying, begged that her body might be buried 
close by that of her wayward son. It was the only thing in 
the universe that she loved, and she thought she had a right 
to be laid beside it. It was a mother's love that made her 
willing to have her grave pointed out for all time as that of 
the mother of a noted criminal. They say that death has 
burned out everything in this world. It seldom conquers a 
mother's love. God says, " I can never forget thee." God's 
love is tenderer and broader than man's. It never, never fails. 
A gentleman once attended a great dinner party, and he 
was impressed by the graceful manner in which the lady of the 
house presided over the gathering. He discovered after 
leaving the house that he had left something in the dining- 
room, so he went back to get it, and he found the hostess 
seated at the table with a young man who looked like a tramp. 
She introduced him as her youngest son, and said, " He has 
gone far astray, but I love him still." Of course she did. 
That's what is going to bring this old world back, — this old 
thought that " God is Love," with an unchangeable, unfailing 
love. Here was a boy who had a loving mother, who was as 
fair and lovely as any being on earth, and he turned his back 
on her, got drunk, and descended into the deepest kind of sin. 
He received no benefit from that mother's love, but the love 
was there all the same. The sun shines on the just and the un- 
just alike, but you can go into a dark cellar and shut out the 
light. You can spurn the love of God; you can despise it; you 
can make light of it; but I hope the Holy Ghost will burn this 
truth down into your heart, that God loves you, — loves you in 
spite of your meanness and sins, — the whole crowd of us. 



thf: meaning of the cross. 



255 



I know of nothing that brings out the love of God better 
than the Bible. When Paris was in the hands of the Com- 
mune they took some of the leading citizens and put them 
to death. Among others they imprisoned the Archbishop of 
Paris. There was a little window in the shape of a cross in 
the door of the cell, and when they dragged him out to die they 
found he had written over the ends of the cross thus: 

HEIGHTH 



LENGTH BbShi BREADTH 



t 



DEPTH 

That cross tells us of God's love. Height: it reaches to 
the very throne of Heaven. Depth: it reaches to the bottom 
of a lost world. Length and Breadth: it reaches to the very 
corners of the earth. It is not our good deeds, our tears, our 
prayers; it is the finished work of Jesus Christ that saves us, 
because He died and gave Himself for us. I do not believe 
any one can get a true glimpse of Jesus Christ without loving 
Him. 

A story is told of a man who went to California when the 
gold excitement broke out, and left his wife and little boy in 
New England. He said as soon as he was successful he would 
send for them. It was a long time before he was successful; 
but at last he sent the money, and his wife and child went to 
New York and sailed on a steamer for San Francisco. Every- 
thing was going well, when all at once the dreadful cry was 
heard, " Fire, fire ! " The fire swiftly spread through the 
vessel; the pumps were set at work; but they could not put it 
out. The flames gained on them, and the captain ordered the 
lifeboats launched. But there were not lifeboats enough to 
take all the passengers, and among those left on deck was the 
mother and her boy. The last boat was pushing away. If 
she did not get into that boat she must perish. She begged of 
the men to take her and her boy; but they said, " We dare not 



2^6 DYING TO SAVE HER CHILD. 

take any more." Her tears and entreaties touched the heart 
of one of the men and he said, " Let us take her; " but the 
others would not. Finally they said "We will take one." 
What did the mother do? Did she leap into that lifeboat and 
leave her boy behind to perish? That is not a mother's love. 
She kissed him, dropped him over into the lifeboat, and said: 
" If you live to see your father, tell him I died to save you." 

Suppose, when that young boy grew to be a man, he should 
speak contemptuously of such a mother, would you not say, 
"He is an ungrateful wretch?" But, sinner, what are you 
doing with Jesus? Did he not do more than that? Was He 
not numbered among the transgressors for us? Was He not 
wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities? 
Did He not die for us? 

I heard of a minister living near Chicago whose son went 
to the city to sell his father's grain. The boy arrived in 
Chicago and sold the grain; but when it was time for him 
to arrive home he did not come. The father and mother 
sat up all night expecting to hear the sound of the return- 
ing wagon every minute, but they waited and waited, and 
still he did not come. The father became so uneasy that 
he went into the stable, saddled his horse, and rode to 
Chicago. When he reached there he found that his son 
had sold the grain but had not been seen since. After 
making investigation he found that the boy had gone into a 
gambling house and lost all his money. After the gamblers 
had taken his ready money they advised him to sell his horse 
and wagon, and with the money thus obtained he could play 
again and make up his loss. He lost all and disappeared. A 
great many think as this young man thought, that rumsellers 
and gamblers are their best friends, when they are all the time 
taking from them their peace, their health, their money, their 
soul — everything they have, and are then ready to forsake 
them. 

After looking fruitlessly for his son, the father returned 
home and told his wife what had happened. But he did not 



A FATHER'S DEVOTION. 



257 



give him up. He went from place to place, asking ministers 
to let him preach for them, and he always told the congrega- 
tion that he had a missing son dearer to him than life, and he 
urged them if ever they heard anything about him to let him 
know. 

At last he learned that he had gone to California. He 
arranged his business affairs and started for the Pacific coast 
to find him. When he arrived in San Francisco he began to 
preach, and he had notices put in the papers, hoping that they 
might reach the mining districts, trusting that if his son were 
there he might see him. One Sunday, after preaching a ser- 
mon, he pronounced the benediction, and the audience went 
away. But he noticed in a corner one who remained. He 
went up to him and found his missing son. He did not repri- 
mand him, he did not pronounce judgment upon him, but he 
put his loving arms around him, drew him to his bosom, and 
took him back home. This is but an illustration of what God 
has been doing for you. There has not been a day, an hour, 
a moment, that He has not been searching for you. He offers 
us His love and His forgiveness. 

Dr. Arnot was one of the greatest of Scotch divines. His 
mother died when he was only three weeks old, and there was 
a large family of them. The Arnot children got the impres- 
sion that their father was very stern and rigid and that he had 
a great many hard laws and rules. I suppose they missed the 
tender care and love of the mother. One rule was that the 
children should never climb trees ; and when the neighbors' 
boys learned this they began to tell them about the wonderful 
things that could be seen from the tops of the trees. Well, 
now, you tell a boy of twelve that he musn't climb a tree and 
he will get up that tree some way. And so the Arnot children 
were all the time teasing their father to let them climb a tree ; 
but he always said : " No." 

One day he was busy reading, and the children said: 

" Father is reading. Let's slip down into the lot and climb 
a tree." 



258 A FATHER'S WISDOM AND LOVE. 

One of the little fellows watched to see that the father did 
not catch them. When his brother got up on the first branch, 
the little fellow on the ground said: 

" What do you see? " 

" Why, I don't see anything." 

" Then go higher, you haven't got high enough." 

So he went up higher, and again the little boy said: 

" Well, now what do you see? " 

" I don't see anything." 

" You aren't high enough, go higher." And the little 
fellow went up as high as he could go, and down he fell and 
broke his leg. 

Willie said he tried to get him into the house but he 
couldn't do it. He was scared nearly out of his wits. He 
thought his father would be very angry. But he ran into the 
house and told him, and his father started for the lot. When 
he got there he picked the boy up in his arms and brought 
him up to the house. Then he sent for the doctor. Willie 
got a new view of his father. He found out the reason why 
he was so stern. He said the moment that boy got hurt no 
mother could have been more loving and gentle. 

My dear friends, there is not one commandment that has 
been given us which has not been for our highest and best 
good. There isn't a commandment that hasn't come from 
the loving heart of God, and what He wants is to have us give 
up that which is going to mar our happiness in this life and in 
the life to come. 

An Englishman told me a story once that may serve to 
illustrate the truth that God loves men in their sin. He does 
not love sin, but He loves men even in their sin. A great 
many years ago a little boy was stolen in London. Long 
months and years passed away, and the mother had prayed 
and prayed, and all her efforts to find him had failed; but she 
did not quite give up hope. One day a boy was sent to sweep 
the chimney, and by some mistake he came down by a different 
chimney and landed in the sitting-room. He thought things 



THE LESSON OF THE VANE. 



259 



looked strangely familiar. His memory began to travel back 
through the years that had passed. The scenes of earlier days 
were dawning upon him, and as he stood surveying the place 
his mother came into the room. He was clothed with rags 
and covered with soot. But the mother recognized her own. 
It was her boy. Did she wait until she sent him to be washed 
before she took him in her arms? No, indeed; she took him 
just as he was, all black and grimy, and hugged him to her 
bosom, and shed tears of joy over him. If you have wandered 
far from Him; if there is not a sound spot on you, if you will 
just come to God He will forgive all and receive you. 

One day Mr. Spurgeon went into the country to spend a 
little time with a friend. This friend had a weather-vane on 
his barn and on the weather-vane were the words " God is 
Love." 

" What do you mean by that? " said Mr. Spurgeon. " Do 
you mean that God's love is as changeable as the wind? " 

" No," said his friend, " I believe that God is love which- 
ever way the wind blows." 

Now, it is pretty hard to make saint or sinner believe that. 
When things are running smoothly we believe that God is 
love, but when things go wrong we think God does not love 
us, and when things are unfortunate and seem to be against 
us, then it is that we think that Christ has forgotten us. Now, 
if I could just get you to believe that God loves you in spite 
of your failings, in spite of your sins, your backslidings, and 
your lukewarmness, I tell you it would be a grand day for 
your souls. 



CHAPTER IX. 

NOT ASHAMED OF CHRIST. STANDING UP FOR JESUS. 

Mr. Moody's Ride with a Mormon Engineer — A Man Who was Proud 
of His Religion — An Amusing Story of Two Cowards — A 
Policeman Who was Ashamed of His Uniform — ■ The Motto on 
the Building — A Confession of Cowardice — Story of the Two 
Young Men Who Sneaked Out to Hear Mr. Moody — Far-reach- 
ing Results of a Sporting Man's Conversion — Students Plan to 
Rotten Egg Mr. Moody — Carrying a Sermon in His Pocket- 
book — Three Fast Young Men Who Went to Ridicule Mr. 
Moody — A Noisy Meeting — A Chinese Test of a Christian — 
Speaking On a Dry-goods Box — Story of the Young Lawyer 
Who Came Out for Christ — How Judge McLean Took His 
Stand — Praying in the Barracks. 

SOME years ago I went to Salt Lake City, and when 
within forty miles of that place, the engineer of the 
train sent word that he would like to have me ride in 
the engine cab with him. He was a Mormon elder, and he 
wanted to convert me to Mormonism before I arrived at Salt 
Lake City. He wasn't ashamed of his religion ; he gloried in 
it. The only religion that I know of that men are ashamed of 
is the religion of Jesus Christ. If a man believes in a false re- 
ligion he is always proud of it. I have never found a Chinaman 
who wasn't proud of being a disciple of Confucius. When I 
was in the Mohammedan country some time ago, I didn't find 
a Mohammedan who didn't feel proud that he was a disciple 
of Mohammed ; but the disciples of Christ are ashamed of the 
only religion in the world that gives a man self-control ; the only 
one that tells how men's sins may be blotted out ; the only one 
that lifts him out of the pit and the mire. 

A man once said to me, " How do you account for the fact 

(260) 



THE WAY OF CALVARY. 2 6l 

that Mohammed lived six hundred years later than Christ, and 
yet Mohammed has more disciples than Christ? " I said, " It 
is very easily accounted for. A man can be a disciple of Mo- 
hammed and not deny himself, and never bear a cross. He 
can live in the darkest, blackest, vilest sin, and yet be a Mo- 
hammedan ; but a man cannot be a disciple of Christ without 
denying himself, without giving up sin, and without taking 
his cross to follow Him." I have often said there would be a 
great stampede into the kingdom of God if men could get into 
heaven without going by the way of Calvary. If we could 
only slip around that hill, and get upon the Mount of Trans- 
figuration, stepping over the cross, and reaching the crown, 
there would be a great rush that way. But it cannot be done. 
The way to Heaven is straight, and in the way there is a cross. 

In one of our meetings a little tow-headed Norwegian boy 
stood up. He could hardly speak a word of English, but he 
got up and came to the front. He trembled and the tears 
trickled down his cheeks, and he said : " If I tell the world 
about Jesus, He will tell the Father about me." That was all 
he said, but I tell you that in those few words he said more than 
all the rest of them, old and young, together. They went 
straight down into the heart of every one present. " If I tell 
the world " — yes, that's what it means, to confess Christ. 

When a man dies we ought not to be compelled to go to his 
native town and hunt up some old, musty church record, in 
order to know whether he was a Christian. The Gospel does 
not mean that you are to join some church and confess Him 
once publicly, and let that be the end of it, but you are to " take 
up your cross daily and follow Him." 

Are there not hundreds who are really ashamed of Christ ? 
I heard a story about two young men who came to the city from 
the country on a visit. They went to the same boarding-house 
and took a room together. When they were ready to go to 
bed each felt ashamed to get down on his knees before the 
other. So they sat watching each other. In fact, to express 
the situation in one word, they both were cowards — yes, 



262 MORAL COURAGE REQUIRED. 

cowards ! At last one of them mustered up a little courage, 
and with burning cheeks, as if he was about to do something 
wicked, he knelt down to say his prayers. As soon as his com- 
panion saw that he also knelt. After they had said their 
prayers one said to the other : 

" I am glad that you knelt; I was afraid of you." 

" Well," said the other, " I was afraid of you, too." 

So it turned out that both were Christians, and yet they 
were afraid of each other. You smile at that, but how many 
times have you done the same thing — perhaps not in that 
way, but the same thing in effect. 

What would you think of a man who wants to be a police- 
man but is unwilling to put on a policeman's uniform. He 
doesn't want any one else to know that he is a policeman. Do 
you think he would be a very efficient policeman? Do you 
think that your life and property would be safe with an officer 
like him ? What would you think of a man who wants to fight 
for his country, who says, " I am just full of patriotism, but I 
don't want to put on a soldier's uniform, or have any one know 
that I am a soldier." What would you do with an army of 
such men? Why, a little band of five hundred men whose 
hearts were truly patriotic, and who lived for their country, 
would rout an army of five hundred thousand of such cowards. 

It takes a hero to be a Christian. Mark that. It takes 
moral courage to come out and confess Christ, and the lack of 
it keeps more people out of the kingdom of God than any- 
thing else. 

Now, some may say, " Really, if I should confess Christ, 
what would they say down at the factory where I work ? " 

" Aha! Up to hear Moody last night, were you?" 
"Did Moody catch you?" "Did you get converted?" 
" Did you get religion ? " And you sneak off like a hound, 
and say, " No, sir. I don't believe in Moody. I never went 
to hear him." That is what you would do. I pity the man 
who will be laughed out of principle. Is it right to serve God ? 
If it is, serve Him. Take vour stand, and STAND. Confess 



TAKE A BOLD STAND. 



263 



Him, and the whole thing is settled. Then it is that eternal life 
begins. Then it is that you become a child of God and an heir 
of Heaven. 

Thousands have gone down to the caverns of death for 
want of this courage. My friends, let us look this great ques- 
tion in the face. If there is anything at all in the religion of 
Christ, give everything for it. If there is nothing in it — if it 
is a myth, if our mothers who have prayed over us have been 
deceived, if the praying people of the last 1900 years have been 
deluded, let us find it out. The sooner the better. If there 
is nothing in the religion of Christ let us abandon it, and eat, 
drink, and be merry, for time will soon be gone. If there is 
no devil to deceive us, no hell to receive us ; if Christianity is a 
sham, let us come out like men and say so. I hope to live to 
see the time when there will only be two classes in this world 
— those who take their stand bravely for Chirst, and those who 
take their stand against Him. This idea of men standing still 
and saying, " Well, I don't know, but I think there may be 
something in it," is absurd. If there is anything it it there is 
everything in it. If the Bible of our mothers is not true let 
us burn it. If it is false, why spend so much money in publish- 
ing it? Why send out millions of Bibles to the nations of the 
earth ? Let us destroy it if it be false, and all those institutions 
that give the Gospel to the world. What is the use of all this 
waste of money? Are we mad? Are we lunatics? Have we 
been deluded? If so, let us burn the Bible and shout over its 
ashes : " There is no God ; there is no hell ; there is no Heaven ; 
there is no hereafter. When men die, they die like dogs in the 
street." But, my friends, if it is true — if there is a Heaven, a 
hereafter, if the Bible is true — let us come out boldly, like 
men, for Christ. Let us take our stand, and not be ashamed 
of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

There is an old stone building that belongs to the Univer- 
sity of Aberdeen, and upon it is inscribed a motto that has been 
there for many years. I wanted to see it with my own eyes, 
and I went up to look at it. It is this : " They say. What 



264 A GOOD MOTTO. 

do they say? Let them say." That's a pretty good motto for 
a man who wants to be a Christian, isn't it? I took that for 
my motto. It is of very little account what man thinks of me, 
but I tell you it is very important what God thinks of me. 

A man once said to me, " I can't let anybody know." "I 
said, " You will never get into the kingdom of Heaven then." 
He tried otherwise, but he could not get in until he came by 
the regular way. If there were a back door to heaven, there 
would be a big rush that way, and people would sneak in and 
sit down as if they had always been there. You are not fit to 
be a disciple of Jesus Christ if you are ashamed of Him. 

When I was preaching in New York there came into the 
inquiry-room a great strong man, six feet tall, who wanted to 
become a Christian. He seemed very much moved. I think 
I spent an hour with him. The next night I had another long 
talk with him. I could bring him to a certain point, but could 
not bring him to the Cross. Finally, I said to a prominent 
layman : 

" I wish you would win that man's confidence, and see what 
it is that is keeping him from Christ." 

He had two or three interviews with him and gave it up. 
But one night, at the young converts' meeting, he rose and 
confessed that he had found Christ. I said : 

" What was the obstacle that kept you from Him so long? " 

He colored up clear to the roots of his hair. He seemed 
very much embarrassed, and finally said that the first night I 
talked with him the thought came to his mind, " If I become 
a Christian I've got to get a Bible and read before my room- 
mate, and he will laugh at me." He tried every way he could 
to get into the kingdom of God and not let his roommate know 
it. Night after night the cross came up : " I've got to get a 
Bible and read before my roommate." And he thought he 
never could do it. But one night the burden became so great 
that he made up his mind that he would go home and read the 
Bible and let his roommate laugh. So he went to his room, 
and was very -glad to find that his roommate wasn't there. He 



THE FEAR OF RIDICULE. 265 

got the Bible out, and had read but three or four verses when 
he heard his roommate's step on the stairs. His first impulse 
was to slip the Bible into his trunk, and appear as though he 
was getting ready to retire. The second thought was, " Now 
is the time to let him know." So he sat there, reading. His 
roommate came in, looked, and said : 

" Are you interested in the Bible? " 

" I am." It is a good thing to get your lips open, and to 
say as much as that. 

" How long has this been going on? " 

" Well, I went to hear Moody, and I made up my mind to 
become a Christian ; but I have been too much of a coward to 
read and pray before you, because I thought you would laugh 
at me. I have been greatly troubled ; but I made up my mind 
to-night I would read my Bible and pray, and let you laugh 
all you wanted to." 

" Well, now," said his roommate, "that is rather singular. 
I have been attending those meetings myself. I was converted 
by the same sermon you say affected you, and I have been try- 
ing ever since to screw my courage up to get my Bible out and 
read it before you." 

And those two cowards had been sneaking out, unknown 
to each other, and going to the same meetings, and each was 
afraid of the other. 

When I was preaching in Agricultural Hall, in London, 
some wealthy men, then recently returned from India, were 
living fast lives in that city, and the subject of Moody and 
Sankey came up at the dinner-table, and they called us 
" mountebanks." One of them, a wealthy sporting man who 
had twenty-nine horses in his stalls, said : 

" Well, gentlemen, I know every one of you, and there is 
not one of us trying to do good ; and I am told these two men 
are trying to do good." 

He took his little daughter and came to Agricultural Hall. 
There were twenty thousand people there. The little girl said : 

" Papa, I want you to introduce me to Mr. Moody." He 



266 RECORDS OF USEFULNESS. 

did so. Then she wanted me to speak to her father. So I got an 
opportunity to talk with him. After he had gone people said: 

" Do you know who that man is ? " 

" No." 

" He is the leader of the sporting men of London, and has 
won many a Derby." 

That man was converted. His son was at Eton, and he per- 
suaded me to go down there. The students had planned to 
throw rotten eggs at me. But he said : 

" If any rotten eggs are to be thrown at Mr. Moody, I will 
take my share," and he stood by my side. 

Four of his sons were converted. One of them preached 
the Gospel in London, and another preached it in California. 
Look at the far-reaching results. I can't begin to tell you 
the hundreds of people converted before that man went up to 
glory. His daughter who led him to Christ is married to a 
good man, and her husband is working for the Lord Jesus 
Christ. My friends, just think that some man or woman or 
child may confess Jesus Christ to-day, and twenty or thirty 
years hence there will be tens of thousands who have been 
turned to Him by that one confession. 

I once received a letter from a man who heard me preach 
twenty-five years before. He said that a sermon on the power 
of Christ to save was published in a newspaper, and he cut it 
out and saved it. It was a blessing to his soul, and he carried 
it in his pocketbook until he wore it to pieces. 

I have a letter which reads : " The last time I heard you 
was in Liverpool over twenty-five years ago. Three of us 
went to hear you and make sport and ridicule. We were fast 
young men ; drunkards and debauchees. At the close of the 
service we went away to pray. That night we shook hands, 
and said, 'We will bid farewell to sin.' That night we turned 
from our evil ways. One of the three died as a missionary on 
the Congo. Another died serving the Lord in Egypt. The 
two are in glory. I have three sons, and they are on the Lord's 
side. It is a great thing to stand up for Christ." 



A WOMAN'S DECISION. 



267 



A lady who had never been to any other than a Quaker 
meeting lost her child by death, and she said, " I will go to 
Moody's meeting, and perhaps I can get a little comfort." 
God blessed her. She had a nephew and a brother who were 
going down through strong drink. She went home and said 
to her family, " I want you to go with me and hear that Amer- 
ican." The meeting was held in the Free Methodist Church. 
That night there was a noisy time, and the Quakers were 
shocked, and on the way home she heard her nephew and her 
brother making sport of what had been said on the subject of 
the New Birth. As she went into the house the thought oc- 
curred to her, " Now it may be that the eternal destiny of these 
two men will depend on my action at supper to-night; " and 
she fell on her knees and prayed God to help her. At the 
supper-table they made all manner of sport ; and she stood up 
for Jesus Christ, and confessed him. Then they said : 

" You don't believe what Moody said about being born 
again, do you? We Quakers have never been taught that." 

" Well," she said, " God has blessed my soul to-day, and I 
would not say a word against what can bless other people. If 
you can get what I have you will thank God all your life." 

The next night the two men intended to go to the theater, 
but through her influence they went to the meeting instead, and 
in a little while the nephew, who was working in one of the 
great foundries that he might learn the business in order to 
become proprietor of it, came with a petition signed by eight- 
een thousand workingmen, asking me to preach to them. A 
great and glorious work followed among them, and all because 
of the stand that lady took for Christ. Stand for God, and 
don't be laughed out of it. 

In some parts of China the English government has made 
arrangements that a man who has given up his old religion is 
not obliged to pay taxes to the joss houses. When the tax- 
collector comes around, if a man says he does not have to pay 
taxes because he is a Christian, the tax-collector makes him 
preach to prove that he is a Christian. If we were to escape 
17 



2 68 ASHAMED, BUT NOT OF CHRIST. 

taxes here by preaching, many would preach. What we want 
is to testify, to be ready at all times to give our testimony, and 
not be ashamed of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

A young man was converted some years ago. who was so 
full of the joy of believing that he could not hold his peace. 
He had to speak, and so he mounted a drygoods box on the 
corner of the street and told what Christ had done for him. A 
large crowd gathered around, and by and by one of these 
modern free-thinkers interrupted him, and said : 

" Young man, you ought to be ashamed to be standing- 
there and talking such stuff." 

The young man was embarrassed, and colored up, and said : 

" I am ashamed of myself, but I am not ashamed of Christ, 
my Master." 

People say, " I am ashamed to speak for Christ because I 
can't speak better." So am I. Many a time I have wished the 
floor would open and let me drop out of sight. He is worthy 
of a better witness than I am. I can honestly say that I have 
been ashamed of myself a good many times, but I do not re- 
member that I have ever been ashamed of my Lord and Master. 

Some say, " If I were a man of wealth and culture and in- 
fluence I could do so much for Christ." God can take a tramp 
and make him more than a man of wealth for Christ. John 
Bunyan was worth more than all the wealthy men of his day. 
If we had wanted some one to write a book worth more than 
all other books, except the Bible, we should probably have gone 
to Cambridge or Oxford; but the Lord converted a drunken 
tinker and he wrote " The Pilgrim's Progress." The Lord 
can take an outcast and make him shine, not only here, but in 
eternity. 

Many years ago a young lawyer went home one day and 
told his wife that he had become a Christian that day in his 
office. They were going to have company at supper that night, 
and he said : 

" After supper I want the servants to come into the draw- 
ing-room, and I am going to read and pray." 



THE FIRST PRAYER. 



269 



Although his wife was a professed Christian, she said : 

" My dear, you know these lawyers who are coming to 
dinner are scoffers and skeptics, and it will be embarrassing if 
you should not succeed in your first attempt to pray. Don't 
you think you had better put it off until after they are gone 
and then go into the kitchen and pray with the servants ? " 

The young lawyer thought a little while, and then said : 

" Well, wife, it is the first time I ever asked Jesus Christ 
into our home, and I think I will ask him into the best room in 
the house." 

After supper he told the gentlemen who had assembled that 
he had that day accepted Jesus Christ, and he would like them 
to remain while he prayed. They went into the parlor, and 
the young lawyer led in prayer. That was Judge McLean, 
one of the ablest Judges of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, who stood for Christ constantly for over forty years. 
Wasn't that a grand confession? 

During the Civil War a young man who had enlisted was 
assigned to the barracks with a number of other soldiers, and 
when night came, as was his custom, he knelt down and 
prayed. The rest were playing cards to see who should pay 
for the drinks. They began to curse him, and throw things at 
him. The next night it was worse ; they just howled. The 
next night it was still worse. He saw the Chaplain and said : 

"What shall I do?" 

The Chaplain said, " Well, those men have just as good a 
right there as you have. I think you had better give it up. It 
disturbs them." 

" Why," he said, " I don't pray very loud." 

" Well, I wouldn't disturb them. You can get into your 
bunk and pray there. You can pray on your back as well as 
on your knees ; and the Lord will hear you just as well." 

The young soldier was disappointed. It was a long time 
before the Chaplain got sight of him again, for the young man 
avoided him after that. But one day they came suddenly upon 
each other, and the Chaplain said : 



270 



A SOLDIER'S COURAGE. 



" Did you take my advice? " 

" Yes, for three nights." 

"How did it work?" 

" Work ? — it didn't work at all. I got into my bunk like a 
coward; my conscience wouldn't let me sleep. So, finally, I 
resolved I would pray before them all, and I've done so ever 
since. What do you think has been the result? Three of the 
men have been converted ; we have a prayer-meeting every 
night, and I think we will get the whole company." 

That's what is wanted — men of moral courage to stand up 
for the right. 

If you want the blessing of Heaven, and the peace that 
passeth all understanding, you must be ready and' willing to 
confess Him. Let the world know that you believe Him and 
are not ashamed of Him. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE SOUL'S GREATEST NEED — WHAT CHRIST IS TO US. 

The Text on the Window Pane — " I've Got Him, Thank God! "— An 
Incident in the Life of Napoleon — A Legacy of Five Million 
Dollars — Sitting Quietly at the Feet of Jesus — A Touching 
Incident — " I Want to be With You" — An Incident of the Civil 
War — The Call for Six Hundred Thousand Men — " We Are 
Coming, Father Abraham " — A Man of One Idea — " Oh, Moody 
is a Fanatic " — An Old Scotchman's Remark — " That Man Saved 
Me" — Anecdote of Rowland Hill — Selling a Woman's Soul at 
Auction — The Two Bidders — Pursuing One's Shadow — An 
Incident of Mr. Moody's Boyhood — Chased by a Shadow — 
Bailing Out the Darkness — Mr. Moody's Early Experiences in 
the West — Looked Upon with Suspicion — Holding Meetings 
in Schoolhouses — The Lantern and the Tallow Dip. 

THE SOUL'S GREATEST NEED. 

WE often hear people say, " Oh, he is a very good man, 
but he lacks one thing " ; or, " She is a very good 
person, but she lacks one thing." If that one thing is 
salvation, they lack everything. You might say all that a dead 
man lacks is life. Only one thing! A sick man who is lying 
on the borders of the eternal world only lacks his health to make 
him all right. That is only one thing, but it is everything to a 
man who is sick. Money is everything to a man in want — a 
beggar. If a man lacks salvation he lacks everything ; and it 
seems to me it would be well for us to pause once in a while 
and ask ourselves the question, " Do we lack that one thing? " 
George Whitefield was once the guest of an old general who 
was held in high esteem. He wanted to speak to him about 
his soul, but his courage failed him. The general was an old 
man, but he was one of those who lack the one thing ; he lacked 
Christ and His salvation. Whitefield was to go away early 
in the morning, and the word had not been spoken ; so before 

(271) 



272 TO HAVE AND TO KNOW. 

he retired he wrote with a diamond upon a pane of glass in his 
room, " One thing thou lackest." After Whitefield had gone 
one of the servants found that text on the window pane, and 
spoke to the general about it, and God used it to bring the old 
soldier to his knees, and into the Kingdom. 

I was once preaching in Manchester, England, and in a 
seat close up to the platform sat a man who looked up at me 
intently all the time. I looked right down on him and said : 
" My friend, won't you take Christ? " Said he, " I have got 
Him, thank God ! " He did not lack Him ; he had got Him ; 
and it is the privilege of every one to have salvation and to know 
he has it. Once when I was at sea we had been in fog and storm 
and darkness for a day or two, and didn't know just where we 
were ; but the moment the clouds broke away a little and we 
could get a glimpse of the sun we took an observation and 
found out where we were. I think it would be well for sinners 
to take an observation and find out where they are. 

Another thing : I don't believe we shall have peace, or com- 
fort, or joy, until the question of assurance is settled. Some 
people say, " It is presumption for you to say you know you are 
saved." I say it is presumption for me to say I doubt it when 
God has said it. Shall I doubt God's own words? But you 
say it is too good to be true. Then you must go and settle that 
with the Lord, not with me. I take it as I find it in the Word 
of God. Do you think He is going to leave His children to go 
through life not knowing whether they are going to glory or 
perdition? There is no knowledge like that of a man who 
knows he is saved, who can look up and see his " title clear to 
mansions in the skies." 

It is said of Napoleon that one day when he was reviewing 
his army* his horse became frightened and ran away at full 
speed, and the Emperor's life was in danger. He could not 
get hold of the rein, but a private soldier sprang out of the 
ranks, and was successful in getting hold of the horse's head 
at the peril of his own life. The Emperor was pleased. Touch- 
ing his hat, he said to him : 



TAKE HIM AT HIS WORD. 273 

" I make you Captain of my Guard." 

The soldier threw away his gun, stepped out of the ranks, 
and went up to where the body-guard stood. The captain of 
the guard ordered him back into the ranks, but he said : 

" No ! I won't go ! " 

"Why not?" 

" Because I am Captain of the Guard." 

" You, Captain of the Guard ? " 

" Yes." 

"Who said so?" 

" He said so," pointing to the Emperor. 

That was enough. He took the Emperor at his word. My 
friends, if God says anything let us take Him at His word. 

Christ is ours for time and eternity ; He will never leave us. 
It seems to me that we want this doctrine preached and taught 
so that Christians will be encouraged to talk to others. Make 
it personal. One thing I know — I cannot read other minds 
and other hearts ; I cannot read the Bible and lay hold of it for 
others ; but I can read for myself, and take God at His word. 
The great trouble is, people take everything in a general way,- 
and do not apply it to themselves personally. 

Suppose a man should say to me, " Moody, a man in Europe 
died last week, and left five million dollars to a certain individ- 
ual." " Well," I say, " I don't doubt it ; it's rather a common 
thing to happen," and I think nothing more about it. But sup- 
pose he says, " He left the money to you." Then I pay atten- 
tion ; I say, " To me ? " " Yes, he left it all to you." I become 
suddenly interested, and want to know all about it. So we are 
apt to think Christ died for sinners ; that He died for everybody 
in general, and for nobody in particular. But when the truth 
comes to me personally that eternal life is mine, and all the 
glories of Heaven are mine, I begin to be interested. 

The longer I live and the older I grow, the more convinced 
I am that there are times when we must sit quietly at the feet 
of Jesus, and only let God speak to our souls. Just keep 
quietly alone, and learn of Jesus. It is when a man is alone 



274 ALONE WITH JESUS. 

with his wife that he tells her the precious secrets of his soul. 
It is not when the family are around or when there is company 
near. So, when we want to learn the secrets of heaven we 
should be alone with Jesus, and listen, that He may come and 
whisper to our souls. The richest hours I have ever had with 
God have not been in great assemblies, but sitting alone at the 
feet of Jesus. But in these hurrying days we cannot get time 
to listen to Christ's whisper. We are so busy we do not choose 
that one thing needful. If we did, we should not talk so much 
as we should listen, and when we did speak it would be only 
when we had something to say. 

I was very much touched one day, many years ago, when 
my little boy (my youngest) was quite small. I was in my 
study, and I told my wife I didn't want to be disturbed. I was 
tracing a line of truth very earnestly through the Bible, when I 
heard a gentle knock at my door. I said : 

" I don't want to be disturbed now." 

But the little knocking kept right on, and so I said : 

" Come in." 

It was my little boy. I thought I would dispose of him, so 
I said : 

" My son, what do you want ? " 

He threw his arms around my neck and kissed me, and said : 

" I don't want anything, only to be with you ; I love you." 

I could not send him away then. I went to the closet and 
got some toys and put them on the floor before him, and I said 
to myself, " Dear little fellow ! He wants to be with me." I 
think there are times when the Lord wants us to be with Him, 
and not only when we want to ask Him for something. There 
are times when we want to be alone and let God talk with us. 

It is a hard thing to serve the public ; but it is a glorious 
thing to serve Christ. He is not a hard master. He knows we 
are apt to make mistakes, and He is ready and willing to for- 
give. If Christ is such a glorious Master should we not be 
willing to sacrifice ourselves to Him and give up all and follow 
Him, and turn our backs upon this world and live for Him ? 



ANSWERING THE CALL. 



275 



When the Union was in danger, how many men laid down 
their lives and gave up everything for their country ! The 
moment that Abraham Lincoln called for six hundred thousand 
men you could hear the steady tramp of their feet coming from 
every direction, and the song went up from all quarters, " We 
are coming, Father Abraham, six hundred thousand strong." 
All Mr. Lincoln had to do was to call, and the men came pour- 
ing in. Christ is calling for laborers now. 

The cry is, " W T hat shall I do ? " Let me say to you, find 
some one thing and do it well. Do not think anything you do 
for the Lord is a little work. What seems to you a little work 
may be the mightiest work that has ever been done. I suppose 
they say of me, " O, Moody is a radical ; he is a fanatic ; he has 
only one idea." Well, it is a glorious idea. I would rather 
have that said of me than be a man of ten thousand ideas and 
do nothing with them. To have one idea, and that idea Christ, 
that is the man for me ; that is the man we want now. A man 
that has one idea, one desire, one thought, and that idea, that 
thought, that desire, Christ and Him crucified — that is what 
this perishing world wants now. It can get on without our 
rhetoric ; it can get on without our fine speeches, without our 
eloquence. It does not want them ; it needs Christ and Him 
crucified. 

WHAT CHRIST IS TO US. 

I had once been speaking on the subject: " What Christ 
Offers to be to Each One of Us," and on my way home I said 
to a Scotch friend who accompanied me, " I got only half 
through my subject to-night. The fact is, I wanted to tell the 
people all about Christ." He replied, " Ah, man, you don't 
expect to tell all about Christ in one meeting, do you? That 
will take all Eternity." 

If we are going to know Christ, we must meet Him at 
the cross ; we must know Him first as our Saviour. Don't 
start from the cradle, but start from the cross. Some one 
asked another who had been converted why Christ was 
divine. " Why," he said, " because He saved me." If he had 



276 



BIDDING FOR A SOUL. 



studied a week he couldn't have given a better answer than 
that; that is one of the best proofs that Jesus Christ is divine, 
because He saves. " There is no other name given under 
Heaven and among men " that is able to save, but that name. 

Redemption is more real than salvation. I asked a man 
some time ago why he thought so much of a certain man. I 
noticed that he could not speak of him without tears in his 
eyes, and so I said, " Why is it that you love that man as you 
do?" "Why, Mr. Moody," he said, "he saved me." He 
told me how he became involved, how he took what did not 
belong to him, thinking he could replace it in a few weeks, but 
when that time came he found he could not. In a week or two 
exposure would come, and it meant sure ruin to him, his wife, 
and family. He went to this friend and poured out his heart, 
and he advanced him the money and paid the debt; and he 
added, " I would lay down my life for that friend. He saved 
me." It was out of gratitude to that man that he was willing to 
give his life for him. 

Ask yourselves, Am I redeemed? If not, why not settle the 
great question now? Why postpone it any longer? Why 
make any more delay? It is said of Rowland Hill that he was 
once preaching in the open air when Lady Erskine rode by, and 
she ordered her carriage driven as close up as possible, so that 
she might hear him. And he said : " My friends, I have got 
something for sale to-day." Of course all was silence then. 
" I am going," he said, " to sell it by auction. It is worth more 
than the crown of England. It is worth more than all the 
world. It is the soul of Lady Ann Erskine. Hark ! I hear a 
bid for her soul. Who bids? Satan bids. Satan, what will 
you give for this soul ? ' I will give riches, and honor, and 
pleasure ; yea, I will give the whole world for her soul ! ' Do 
I hear another bid for this soul ? Ah ! methinks I hear another 
bid. Who bids? The Lord Jesus bids. Jesus, what will you. 
bid for this soul ? ' I will give peace, and joy, and comfort, that 
the world knows not of. Yea, I will give eternal life for her 
soul ! ' " Turning to Lady Erskine he said, " You have here two 



THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE. 277 

bidders, which will you take ? " And, ordering her carriage 
door opened, she made her way through the crowd and said, 
" The Lord Jesus shall have my soul if He will take it." That 
story may be true, or it may not be true. But it is true there 
are two parties bidding for your soul to-day. 

I hear people say,." There are so many creeds now, and so 
many different doctrines, I don't know the way to become a 
Christian. Here are our Roman Catholic friends, and they say 
theirs is the only way ; they say they came straight down from 
Pentecost. Then you go to the Episcopalians, and they will 
tell you that theirs is the apostolic church. You go over to 
Russia and they will tell you that the Greek church came right 
straight down from the Ark, and theirs must be the right way. 
Here are our good Baptist friends ; they think they are nearer 
right than any of them. Here are our Methodist friends ; you 
can tell a John-Wesley Methodist anywhere, and they think 
they are right. Then come our Congregationalist friends, and 
they think they are nearer right than anybody else. Then a 
Presbyterian asserts that John Calvin and John Knox were 
nearer right than any of them, and the Lutherans think they are 
all right, and I don't know which is right." 

The Lord hasn't left us in the dark. He says, " I am 
the way, the truth, and the life." Accept Christ and you will 
have the right way, the right life, and the right truth. When 
there were no paths through the woods, and men wanted to 
leave a sign by which others might follow them through the 
trackless forest, they chipped the trees with a hatchet, every 
few feet, and they called it " blazing the way." The Son of 
God (fame down here and blazed the way through the wilder- 
ness, and if we will take our eyes off from one another, and 
off from sects and creeds and doctrines, and follow Him, we 
shall be led in the right way. We would be saved many a 
dark hour, if we were only willing to walk with God, if we 
would only just let Him take us by the hand and lead us. 
What God wants us to do is to follow in His footsteps. I 
have been told that scouts sometimes find an Indian trail con- 



2^8 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 

sisting of only one footprint, as if only one man had passed over 
the land. The chief goes before, and all the rest of the tribe 
follow him and put their feet into his footsteps. That is what 
our Chief wants us to do. He has passed through the heavens 
and gone up on high, and He wants us to follow. 

That brings me to another thing : Christ is the light ; not 
a light, but the light ; not a way, but the way ; not a door, but the 
door ; there is only one door. My dear friends, these denomi- 
nations build up fences : the Catholics have put up a high fence, 
the Greek church, the Baptists, the Methodists, the Congrega- 
tionalists, the Presbyterians, all have put up their fences, but 
the Lord Jesus will sweep them all away. Should anyone ask 
if you are a Methodist, or a Baptist, the question is of no 
account ; but the real question is, Are you a Christian, and bap- 
tized? If you are, these names don't amount to anything. 
When you get to heaven, you won't find Methodists or Bap- 
tists or Episcopalians or Romanists or Congregationalists or 
Presbyterians, but we shall all be one in Christ Jesus, the whole 
crowd of us. You can't be in the dark if you follow Christ. 

I was once in a gentleman's house, and he called my atten- 
tion to a picture that hung on the wall. I told him if any one 
had given it to me, I wouldn't put it up. The first time I saw 
it I thought it was a beautiful picture ; but when I remembered 
the text it portrayed, " I am the light of the world," I changed 
my opinion. It represented Jesus Christ standing at the door 
of a cottage, with a great lantern. I thought, " What does 
Jesus Christ want of a lantern ? " It would be like hanging a 
lantern on the sun. If you get Jesus Christ, you get the 
lantern and everything else. He is the light, and He wilidispel 
all the darkness around you. If you want light, and peace, and 
joy, turn your eyes toward Jesus Christ, and they will all come 
to you. 

Did you ever try to catch your shadow? I have tried it. 
I placed a light on the floor, and tried to leap over the shadow, 
by jumping over the light ; but the shadow went over my head, 
and I never could catch it. I could run then faster than I can 



THE WAY TO DISPEL DARKNESS. 



279 



now, but I couldn't catch my shadow. It was a little shadow 
then, not so big as it is now, but I couldn't catch it. I remem- 
ber one night when the sun had sunk far down in the west, I 
was going, down the mountain side facing the sun, and a boy 
was coming after me, trying to catch me. I ran down the 
mountain — I was barefooted, and I could run pretty fast then 
— and by and by I looked over my shoulder to see if the boy 
was gaining on me, and what did I see ? A great long shadow 
coming after me, but I couldn't see the boy. I remember lots 
of times when I have been facing the sun, looking around and 
finding a shadow coming after me. I didn't try to catch it at 
all, but it was trying to catch me. Just turn your eyes to Jesus, 
and peace and joy will come right after you. 

Suppose a building was just completed, and it was then 
found that there were no windows in it, no electric lights, or 
gas, or means of lighting it ; and the builder's attention is called 
to it, and he comes in and says, " Why, I never thought about 
that ! There is to be a meeting here this afternoon, and I've 
forgotten all about the lighting." So he gets some men with 
pails and sets them at work bailing out the darkness ! You 
would say that he was crazy — had gone mad ! The quickest 
way to dispel darkness is to let the light in. I tried to make this 
illustration as absurd as I could, because you are doing the 
very thing it illustrates. Just let the light in, and the darkness 
will take care of itself. 

When I first went West, I always used to try to preach in 
churches on Sundays, and talk to people wherever I got a 
chance through the week. Of course I wasn't known then, and 
sometimes they would look upon me with a good deal of sus- 
picion. If I didn't get into a church, I would get up a meeting 
in some schoolhouse. Sometimes after I had spoken in the 
afternoon, some old farmer would get up and say, " Won't you 
speak here again to-night ? " " Yes, sir." Then he would an- 
nounce, " The young brother will speak here to-night at early 
candle-light." The first man who came to the meeting would 
bring, perhaps, an old dingy lantern. He would set the 



2 8o LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE. 

lantern up on the desk, and while it didn't give much light, it 
was a good deal better than sitting in the dark. Perhaps the 
next one who came in would be a woman, and she would bring 
out from under her shawl an old sperm-oil lamp. The light 
would be very feeble, but she would set the lamp up on the desk 
and it helped a little. The next man would bring out of his 
pocket a tallow-dip, and he would light his match and set that 
up on the desk. That is the way they would light up the room ; 
and by the time we got all the people there, we had plenty of 
light. If every man and woman would give only a little light, 
they could light up a whole city. If you can't be a lighthouse, 
you can give as much light as a tallow-dip, or an old dingy 
lantern. That is what we are here for, not to be mere agents to 
represent our Master, but we are here to shine ; not only in our 
homes, but in our places of business. Wherever our light goes, 
we must not let it give an uncertain light. Set the light on a 
hill, not in a valley ; put it on top, not under the bushel. 



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CHAPTER XI. 

THE UNBOUNDED GRACE OF GOD. 

Telling Mr. Moody How to Preach — The Old Lady Who Locked 
the Door — Mr. Moody's first Arrival in Boston as a Boy — 
Haunting the Post-office — The Man Who Built a Ladder to 
Heaven — The Captured Spy — Mr. Moody's Vanished Audi- 
ence — The Man Behind the Furnace — Sunday-school Teacher 
and the Silver Watch — "More to Follow" — Living on "Old 
Joy " — The Man Who Never Forgot the " Meetings of '57 " — 
One of Mr. Moody's Experiences in London — " High Level " or 
" Low Level " — " Is this Young Man ' O. O ' ? " — A Disgusted 
Listener — A Remarkable Story — "A Tick at a Time " — 
"Peculiar" People — Why He Put an Extra Shine on His 
Boots — " Weak " and " Lazy " People — "I Thought it Wouldn't 
Make any Difference." 

WHEN we opened our first meetings in New York one 
of the newspapers began to tell me how to preach, 
and said if I would tell the people to do the best they 
could, it would be " sound doctrine." I said that I would tell 
them. I think I have enough grace not to tell a man to work 
out his salvation in his own strength. If a man's works could 
save him, would Christ have left the bosom of the Father and 
suffered the agonies of Gethsemane and Calvary? There is 
not a place in the Bible where it teaches that a man can save 
himself independent of God, and separate from God. You 
say, What was the law given for? It was given that every 
mouth might be stopped ; and when a man has come to honor 
the gift he has not much to say. 

Perhaps no word in the Bible is so misunderstood as the 
word " grace." It means unmerited mercy, undeserved favor. 
If no one was to be saved until he was worthy there would be 
no more souls redeemed. But God has not promised to deal 

(283) 



284 



LAW AND LOVE. 



in grace with those who are worthy, but with the unworthy. 
In the second chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to Titus grace is 
portrayed in a threefold manner; grace that saves us; grace 
that teaches us how to live ; and grace that sends us out into 
the vineyard to work. That covers the Christian life. 

The law came by Moses, but grace and truth by Jesus 
Christ. The law tells me how vile I am. Grace comes and 
cleanses me, and makes me meet for the kingdom of God. 
That is the difference between law and grace ; law slays a man, 
but grace makes him live ; the law takes a man to death and 
judgment, but Christ comes and quickens him, giving eternal 
life. Let me repeat ; law leads unto death, but grace leads to 
eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Why, the law is a schoolmaster ; a cold, severe man who is 
continually holding a rattan over you. Thou shalt do this, and 
thou shalt do that. That is the law, with a rattan at the back of 
it. But under grace the schoolmaster tries to rule the school 
with kindness and love. He says if you love me, do this ; if 
you love me, don't do that. 

The schoolmaster that taught me was a harsh, severe man. 
It was a word and a blow with him, and generally the blow 
came first. I knew what it was to experience severity in my 
school days, and I also knew what it was to experience kind- 
ness. After that stern school-teacher came a kind-hearted 
lady, who ruled by love. Well, we thought we should have a 
grand time — do just as we pleased — didn't fear her. The 
first time that I broke a rule, instead of seeing a rattan in her 
hand, I saw tears in her eyes. That was a good deal worse than 
a stick or a rawhide to me. She asked me to remain after 
school. When we were alone she took me by the hand and 
talked to me in a low, kind voice, and with tears in her eyes. 
" If you love me," she said, " keep my rules." I tell you I never 
broke a rule after that. Her kind words went straight to my 
heart. 

Dr. Arnot used to tell the story of one of his experiences 
when he was pastor of a church in Glasgow. He had a parish- 



BARRING THE DOOR. 



285 



ioner, an old lady, who could not pay her rent. So the Doctor 
went around to see her, and knocked at the door. No one 
came ; but he thought he heard some one walking stealthily 
around inside, so he knocked again, and louder and still louder. 
Then he tried the door, but it was fastened. Then he kicked 
on the door, and made such a noise that the next door neighbor 
came around to see what the fuss was all about. The Doctor 
said to himself: 

" My ears must have deceived me." 

He went away. Some days after that he met the old lady in 
the street and told her that having heard she was in great dis- 
tress, and could not pay her rent, he had called around to help 
her. 

" Oh ! " she said, " was that you ? Why, Doctor, I thought 
it was the landlord coming around for his rent, and I kept the 
door locked and fastened." 

That is the condition of many before God. They shut the 
door, lock and bar and double bar it, and keep the Lord out, and 
think he is coming only to demand something of them. 

It is amusing to hear of people working out salvation when 
they haven't got any. You must first get salvation before you 
can " work it out." You have got to take salvation, first, as a 
gift. A man has got to have a hundred cents before he can 
spend a hundred cents, hasn't he? 

When I went to Boston as a boy I soon ran short of money, 
and I anxiously looked for a letter from home with some money 
in it ; so I used to go to the post-office on the arrival of every 
mail and inquire for a letter. The man at the general delivery 
window would say there wasn't any ; then I would say, 

" I think there must be a letter there somewhere ; won't you 
please look again ? " And he would reply : 

" I think I know my business ; there is no letter here for 
you." 

At last the long-looked for letter came, and I never was so 
glad to get anything in my life. I opened and read it ; it was 
from my young sister, and she was very much afraid that T 
18 



286 SALVATION A GIFT. 

would be robbed, and she cautioned me to look out that thieves 
didn't pick my pockets. I was more concerned about getting 
something into my pockets than about having them picked, for 
I hadn't anything in them. 

You must take salvation first as a gift, and then work be- 
cause you are saved. Work from the cross, not work towards 
it. Work it out. I have very little sympathy with lazy Chris- 
tians. I believe laziness belongs to the old creation, and not 
to the new. When a man works for salvation, and puts his 
work in place of salvation, he cannot talk to you about the " gift 
of God." 

If a man comes to my door and asks me for a ton of 
coal or a load of wood, there is no merit in his taking the gift ; 
and there is not much chance for boasting when you take the 
gift of God as a beggar takes alms. The reason why no more 
are saved is because many would like to be saved on their own 
terms ; they want to put God under obligations and make out 
that they are pretty good sinners, just coming short a little ; can 
pay ninety-nine cents on a dollar. They think the Lord will 
make up the rest. 

I once heard of a man who thought he could work his way 
up to heaven by giving up his wealth and doing good deeds. 
One night he dreamed he was building a ladder from earth to 
heaven. At first it was pretty near the ground ; but as he kept 
doing good deeds it kept going up and up, and one day when 
he had been unusually generous, having given several thousand 
dollars to a good purpose, the ladder went right up out of sight. 
He helped God a good many years, and the ladder kept going 
up higher and higher until finally it reached right up to the 
throne of God. Then he thought he was going to be saved ; so 
he left the world and started to climb the ladder, but before he 
got far it began to tremble, and when he got up into the clouds 
it shook so he could hardly keep on. While he was clinging 
to his frail support, terribly frightened, he heard a voice from 
the throne — " He that climbeth up some other way, the same 
is a thief and a robber." Then down came the ladder and he 



HATRED TURNED TO REVERENCE. 



287 



awoke from his sleep. If you would go to heaven think of that 
dream and know that you must enter through the only way 
that God has provided, that is, through His own Son. 

A Scotchman said it took two to convert him, — himself 
and the Almighty. A man said to him, " What did you do? " 
He said, " I did all I could against it, and the Lord did the 
rest." Let your mind go back to the time when Christ first 
met you, and you will find that out. 

A minister once introduced a man to me, and asked me to 
notice him particularly so that I would know him again. When 
I reached my friend's home I said, " Tell me about that man." 
" Well," he said, " during the war he was a Confederate spy, 
was captured, courtmartialed, and sentenced to be shot. He 
cursed President Lincoln, and he cursed God, but especially 
he cursed the President. It seemed as if he lay awake nights 
to heap abuse upon President Lincoln. The soldiers lost all 
pity for him, and at last they grew so angry that they would 
have been willing to starve him to death. One day an officer 
came in, and the prisoner supposed he had come to order him 
to be shot. He began to curse and revile Lincoln, and the 
officer said : 

" If you received your deserts you would be shot ; but the 
President has sent you a pardon, and you are a free man ! " 

" What ? What's that ? " stammered the prisoner. 

" There, sir," said the officer, " is your pardon, and we have 
no claim upon you." 

When the man realized that he was pardoned he broke down 
completely, and wept like a child. And my friend added, 
" That man is now an elder in my church, and there is no man, 
North or South, who more reveres the memory of Lincoln, or 
who will more earnestly defend his character." That is often 
the way the Lord saves. I have seen a sinner cursing and re- 
viling, but the grace of God came to him, and he became a new 
man in Christ Jesus. 

A man who believes that he is lost is near salvation. Why? 
Because you haven't got to work to convince him that he is 



288 . RESCUED FROM DESPAIR. 

lost. Anyone who will repent and turn to God will be saved. 
It makes no difference what your life has been in the past. I 
was preaching one Sunday to a fashionable audience, and after 
the sermon I said : 

" If there are any who would like to remain and talk, I 
shall be glad to talk with them." 

They all got up, turned around, and every one of them went 
out. I felt as if I were abandoned. When I was going out I 
saw a man behind the furnace. He had no coat on, and was 
weeping bitterly. I said : 

" My friend, what is the trouble ? " 

He said : " You told me to-night that I could be saved ; 
that there wasn't a man so far gone but the grace of God could 
reach him. I am an exile from my family ; I have drunk up 
twenty thousand dollars within the last few months ; I have 
drunk up the coat off my back, and if there is hope for a poor 
fellow like me I should like to be saved." 

I didn't dare give him money for fear he would spend it for 
more drink, but I got him a place to stay that night, provided 
him a coat, took an interest in him, and six months after that, 
when I left Chicago for Europe, he was one of the most earnest 
Christian men I knew. The Lord had blessed him wonder- 
fully. He was an active, capable man. The grace of God 
can save just such men, if they will only repent. 

A Sunday-school teacher of a class of boys wanted to show 
them how free the gift of God is. So he took out a silver watcli 
and offered it to the first boy in the class, and said : 

" I will give you this watch, if you will take it." 

The boy laughed, and would not take it. Then he offered 
it to the next boy, and the next, and to every boy in the class 
till he came to the youngest, and the little fellow slipped it into 
his own hand. The other boys thought it was a joke on the 
teacher's part. The teacher then took out the watch-key and 
said : 

" The watch is yours. You have taken me at my word. 
Wind the watch up, and it will keep good time." 



TAKING ALL GOD OFFERS. 



289 



And one of the other boys said : 

" What do you mean ? That's not his watch for good, 
is it?" 

" Yes." 

" And he needn't ever bring it back to you ? " 

" No." 

" Oh — h ! If I had known that, I'd have taken it." 

Rowland Hill tells a story of a rich man and a poor man of 
his congregation. The rich man came to Mr. Hill with a sum 
of money that he wished to give to the poor man, and asked 
Mr. Hill to give it to him as he thought best, either all at once 
or in small amounts. Mr. Hill sent the poor man a five pound 
note with the message — " More to follow." Every month 
came the remittance with the same message — " More to fol- 
low." Now, that's grace. " More to follow " — yes, thank 
God, there's more to follow. 

I believe it is dishonorable for God's people to keep singing 
about living " at this poor, dying rate," and talking about how- 
little love they have for Him. People get up in the prayer-meet- 
ing and say if they can get a crumb from the Father's table they 
will be satisfied. Crumbs are good eating for cats and dogs 
and chickens, but poor for a man. I think the Lord wants us 
to ask for the loaf. What would you say if I were a millionaire 
with an income of a hundred thousand dollars a year, and so 
many thousand dollars a week to live on, and I really lived on 
a few cents a day. You would say that I was the meanest, 
closest man you ever met, and you would have the utmost con- 
tempt for me. We have a rich banker, but if we get a " little " 
we are perfectly satisfied. God says, " Come boldly unto the 
throne of grace that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to 
help in time of need." We can have all the grace we want. 
It is a question of simply taking what God offers us. 

I remember when I was on the Pacific coast, a man took me 
through his fine house, over his broad lands, showed me his 
thriving orchards, and said : " Mr. Moody, you are a guest 
of mine, and I want you to feel perfectly at home ; do what you 



2 oO LIVING ON STALE MANNA. 

like." Well, after he had said that, you don't suppose if I 
wanted an orange I was going under the tree to pray that it 
would fall into my pocket, do you ? No. I just went up boldly 
and plucked what I wanted. 

There are a lot of Christians that are sort of half-starved; 
they are living on past experience, thinking of the grand times 
they had twenty years ago, perhaps when they were converted 
— living on stale manna. I know some people that just live 
on old joy. A friend told me of a man who lived for eighteen 
years on the '57 revival. " Why," he said, " I never enjoyed 
myself as I did in '57 ; that is when I was converted ; you ought 
to have seen the meetings we had in '57." Never anything like 
'57. If he was in prayer-meeting, it made no difference what 
the subject was, he was always talking about '57. Well, '57 
was good with me ; '58 was better than '57 ; '59 was better than 
'58, and so on, and I expect each year is going to wind up better 
than any preceding year. I believe the path of the just is as a 
shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. 

Don't you know that we honor God when we ask Him 
for great things? I believe it is dishonoring to God, — I be- 
lieve it deeply in my soul, — for us to live the way we are living, 
at this low rate, this low level. I remember the first time I 
went to London, in 1867. I wanted to see the Crystal Palace. 
It was out of the city. So I went to the ticket office, and said : 

" Give me a ticket for the Crystal Palace." 

" High Level, or Low Level? " said the booking-clerk. 

I had no idea what he meant, but I thought it might be high 
fare or low fare, and I said : 

" Low Level." 

I've never gone " Low Level " since. I got enough that 
day. I found that I was landed down in a hollow, and the 
Palace was away up on a hill. I think I climbed two hundred 
and sixty steps, and I was all out of breath when I reached it. 
I found if I had taken a " High Level " ticket I should have 
been landed right up by the Palace. That's why Christians 
have to climb. They go " Low Level " all the time, and what 



OUT AND OUT FOR CHRIST. 



2 9 ] 



a time they have of it in the evening of life. The grace of God 
is to lift us up on the " High Level." 

There is another class of people who labor under the delu- 
sion that if they are worldly Christians they are going to make 
the most out of both worlds. You couldn't make a greater mis- 
take. If a man asks me about becoming a Christian, but fears 
that he will not be kept, I say to him, " Either stay in the world 
or get clear out of it." I remember when I first went to Lon- 
don, a merchant wanted me to go to Dublin, and I went. He 
introduced me to an old, white-haired man, who said: 

" Is this young man all ' O. O.' ? " 

" Yes," said the London merchant, " He is ' O. O.' " 

I began to color up. I had heard of D. D., but not of 
"O. O." And he said: 

" Is he Out and Out for Christ? " 

I never forgot that expression. " Out and Out." The 
only way to live a peaceful life, a joyful life, is to live it " Out 
and Out." It is the only way that Christians should try to live. 

A great many people say, " Well, this has been my experi- 
ence : I have not found grace enough to keep me in perfect 
peace, rest, and joy." Then that's your own fault ; because you 
don't go to the Lord and get it. When I was preaching in 
London in 1884, a crippled lady was brought in a chair to one 
of our meetings. She sat right in front of me, and she wore 
a look of perfect disgust and contempt through the whole ser- 
vice. When the meeting was over the footman came to carry 
her out to her carriage, and she said : 

" Take me out of this ! " 

I said to myself, " I shall never see her again ; " but, to my 
amazement, she was back the next day, and they kept bringing 
her back from day to day. I watched her, and that look of 
contempt and disgust began to disappear, and in its place came 
an eager, anxious look. One day she sent for me, and said : 

" Mr. Moody, you have something that I have not." 

" If you haven't got the love of the Lord Jesus Christ in 
your heart, I have something that you have not," I replied. 



292 



THE DISCOURAGED PENDULUM. 



" You have got peace and joy that I know nothing about." 

" I am sure of that if you don't know Christ." 

" But I would like to have it," she said. 

" You can have it, you can have that Christ ; " and I 
preached Christ to her. And she said : 

" Well, when you go to America, it will all be over with me." 

She was sure she could not " hold out." Finally, one day, 
I happened to think of the old fable of the Pendulum and the 
Clock, — how the pendulum figured out the number of thou- 
sand and hundreds of thousands and millions of times it must 
tick, and it came to the conclusion that it could never travel so 
far, swinging such a great distance, so many miles, and it was 
going to give up the " strike " ; but the second thought came 
and it decided to go on : it was only " a tick at a time." Some 
people think they are going to get enough grace at an experi- 
ence meeting to last all their lifetime. No, No. Get manna 
from heaven fresh every day. 

Now there are people who, because they can get light on 
their path for only a day at a time won't take it. My friends, 
what would happen if God should give you grace enough at 
once to last all your lifetime? I have a friend on the banks of 
Lake Erie, and his business establishment is connected by 
pipes with the lake ; and he said if the Government should give 
him Lake Erie he wouldn't know what to do with it. It would 
flood the place and drown him out. All we have to do is to 
keep the communication open. Just draw on the Bank of 
Heaven. You couldn't break that bank if you tried. Go 
down to a city bank and you will see the notice : " Open from 
10 to 3." But the Bank of Heaven is open all the time, day 
and night. 

Well, when the servants came to take this crippled lady 
away that day, she was still doubting ; but she came again, and 
again, and I saw a great change in her face. About ten days 
after, I received a letter in which she said : 

" Mr. Moody, I want to thank you for that fable. God used 
that to bring light to my soul. I said, ' I can trust Him to- 



STEP BY STEP. 



293 



night, and I will go on step by step,' and I concluded to trust 
Him then and there as the light broke in upon me, and I have 
been wonderfully blest. I sent my servant to get a clock with 
a pendulum that swung back and forth ; and the servants have 
changed my name, and they now call me ' Lady Pendulum.' " 

She signed her name to the letter, " Lady Pendulum," and 
that was the only name I knew her by for a long time. When 
I left London I received a box from her, and there was a pen- 
dulum clock in it, and she said : 

" Will you take this clock home with you, and think of the 
poor sinner going on step by step? " 

Almost every year I get a letter from her, and the " clock 
is still ticking." 

In 1892 I went into the Hall in London, and I saw Lady 
Pendulum there, and I said : 

" How are you? " 

" Oh," she replied, " the clock is still ticking." 

She has educated two or three missionaries and sent them 
to India to preach the Gospel. She sends beautiful flowers, 
hundreds of books, and texts of Scripture in beautiful frames, 
to the hospitals, and is active in all good works. 

At Northfield we have people come to speak to our 
students, over eleven hundred of them, from sixteen to twenty 
years of age, and some of the speakers say, " I want you to 
understand that you are seeing your best days." And I squirm 
like a fish out of water. My friends, I don't think I have 
seen my " best days " by a good deal. I have no sympathy 
with the idea that all good people are gone, and the best times 
are behind us. Not a bit. There's a grand army of witnesses 
gone on ahead, but it grows brighter and brighter. 

You hear so many people mourning that " something is 
going to happen." When the hour comes, there will be grace 
given to help you. A great many people live all their lifetime 
under the " bondage of death." A man said to me some time 
ago, " Moody, have you grace enough to go to the stake as a 
martyr?" "No, what do I want to go to the stake for?" 



294 



BENDING UNDER THE LOAD. 



Another said, " Moody, if God should take your son have you 
grace enough to bear it ? " I said, " What do I want grace for ? 
I don't want grace to bear that which has not been sent. If 
God should call upon me to part with my son He would give me 
strength to bear it." What we want is grace for the present, 
to bear the trials and temptations for every day. " As thy 
days, so shall thy strength be." 

Don't go around whining and mourning, for there is plenty 
of it. Some people borrow all the trouble they can from the 
past and the future, and then multiply it by ten, and get a big 
load, and go reeling and staggering under it. If you ask them 
to help any one else, they say they can't — they've got enough 
to do to take care of themselves ; forgetting " Casting all your 
care on Him, for He careth for you." 

A man was once traveling along a highway, and he over- 
took another man carrying a heavy burden on his back, and he 
asked him to ride. But the man, after he got into the wagon, 
still kept his bundle on his back, saying, " I am willing to carry 
it if I can only get a ride." So many are content to be nominal 
Christians, and go along with great loads and burdens ! 

The three Bonars, John, Horatio, and Andrew, were all 
preachers at the same time. They lived to be eighty years of 
age. One said, " There is nothing before the true believer that 
is not glorious." Some reporter caught it and .sent it out, and 
it came to this country and I got hold of it ; and it opened up 
a flood of light to my soul. I consulted my concordance, and 
I declare I almost became a shouting Methodist before I got 
through. I found that my garments were to be garments of 
praise, of grace, and glory ; my song was to be the song of 
the glorified ; my society was to be the society of those who 
washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, — the society of 
the purified. This body was to be fashioned like unto His 
glorious body, and I found many other glorious things. 

" Everything glorious ? " How is this ? Does not death 
intervene between us and the glory? My friends, were we not 
given eternal life? If I have eternal life, am I going to die? 



THE DARK VALLEY. 2 Q5 

The spirit cannot die. I shall move out of this body into a 
better one. I have " a building of God, an house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens." Why, there's nothing to fear 
about death. All that it can do to the true child of God is to 
hasten him on to glory. I believe that the Twenty-third Psalm 
is more misquoted than anything else in the Bible. It is used 
in all the Jewish synagogues ; in the Latin Church ; in the Greek 
Church ; it is in the Church of England service, and in all the 
Protestant Churches, and many a nation chants it at the burial 
of the dead, and many an army has gone to battle shouting it. 
All through the Civil War there was nothing known better 
than the Twenty-third Psalm. And yet it is misquoted more 
than anything else in the Bible. They say, " Though I walk 
through the dark valley of the shadow of death." And they 
emphasize the " d-a-r-k " so as to send a chill down your back. 
The word " dark " is not there at all. It reads : " Though I 
walk through the valley of the shadow of death," etc. Did 
you ever see a shadow in the dark? You have got to have 
light to find a shadow. All death can do to the true believer is 
to throw a shadow across his path. Don't be afraid of your 
shadow. 

There's a class of people to-day very much afraid of being 
called " peculiar." They hesitate to work for Christ because 
they will be considered peculiar. You will notice that when 
God has some work to do, He generally calls peculiar people 
to do it. I have no doubt that Moses was a very peculiar man 
in his day, and those proud Egyptians said he was the biggest 
fool in Egypt when he turned his back on the gilded palaces of 
Pharaoh and identified himself with the slaves, the Hebrews. 

If you had dropped down in the old world and asked some- 
body what sort of a man Enoch was, they would have said he 
was a remarkably good man but peculiar; a very narrow- 
minded man. If there's a progressive euchre party, you can't 
find any of the Enoch family there. If there's a horse race, 
and the whole country turns out to see it, you will not find 
Enoch there. He wasn't a great scholar, or a great scientist, 



296 GIVING THE BEST WE HAVE. 

and we do not read that he was a great general or a great 
geologist. In fact, he wasn't anything that the world usually 
calls great ; there's nothing of that kind recorded about Enoch. 
But he " walked with God " three hundred and sixty-five years, 
and he was not a very peculiar mortal ; for " God took him." 
He has been gone for four thousand years, and if he shone so 
bright down here in this world, how much brighter must he 
shine in heaven. I suppose if you had asked the men in 
Elijah's time what kind of a man Elijah was, they would have 
said, " He is a very good man, but Oh ! so peculiar." But for 
service and power, he was worth the whole 7,000 who bowed 
the knees to Baal. 

There's another class of people who seem to think that a 
few ministers and church officers must do all the work, and the 
rank and file of the church are to be " looked after " and cared 
for. A great many look upon the church as a hospital, in which 
they are to be taken care of, and somebody is to wait upon 
them all the while. Now, that isn't true. You've got to get 
up and do some of the work of the church yourself. 

Every man and woman can have a hand in this work, if they 
will. In the twenty-fifth chapter of Exodus we read, " And 
the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of 
Israel, that they bring me an offering : of every man that giveth 
it willingly with his heart ye shall take my offering. And this is 
the offering which ye shall take of them : gold, and silver, and 
brass, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and 
goats' hair." If they had no gold to bring then they must bring 
silver ; and if they had neither gold nor silver, they must bring 
brass, — just as acceptable to God as gold, if that was the best 
they had. God wants heart-service, and that which man thinks 
the most of. He gave the best He had, and He wants you and 
me to do the same in return. " Blue, and purple, and scarlet, 
and fine linen, and goats' hair." I've always been glad the 
" goats' hair " was added there. A great many of us are poor, 
so poor that we can't give " blue, and purple, and scarlet, and 
fine linen," but we can find a few goat hairs. They were just 



SERVICE DUE TO GOD. 



297 



as acceptable to God as a bag of gold. What a power Chris- 
tianity would be if every man and women did what they could. 

Now, my friends, do you see the wisdom in this? I have 
heard people say, " If I were as rich as that millionaire I would 
build a church myself." Would you? Well, you would kill 
it. If I was worth millions I wouldn't build churches for God, 
nor endow a church, but I would work for God. I have seen 
a great many churches heavily endowed, and I have known 
many churches in the Old World, twice dead, all gone sound 
to sleep. 

God could build a magnificent church in Heaven, and drop 
it down here to earth all finished if He wanted to. He could 
send angels down here to build it without any of our help. He 
could do it, but He wants us to have a hand in it ; He wants us 
to get the blessing. A man saw a little boot-black putting an 
extra shine on his own boots, and he said : 

" What are you doing there, my boy ? Why are you taking 
so much pains to black your own boots? " 

" I am going up to Exeter Hall ; there's a meeting for 
foreign missions up there, and I'm going," the boy said. 

" What takes you up there ? Are you interested in foreign 
missions? " 

: ' Yes, sir ; I gave a penny to foreign missions last year, and 
I am going to see what they have done with it." 

Every man is to have something to do ; and if a man is to be 
a co-worker with God, it is a privilege to help build up His 
kingdom. Keep that in mind. The more the heart gives, the 
more it will receive from on high. God's law is service. If 
you've got money, give it ; if you've got talents, give them. If 
you have got a voice, give it, and let no man say that he can do 
nothing. You say : "lam so weak." Why not be honest 
and say, " I am so lazy ! " 

I remember some years ago some one sent me a tract 
entitled, " What is That in Thine Hand? " I threw it aside 
for the time, because I was very busy, but the title haunted me, 
and I picked up the tract and read it. The writer went on to 



298 THE WONDER-WORKING ROD. 

say that when the Lord called Moses, Moses thought the Al- 
mighty had made a mistake; that the Lord had called the 
wrong one. You know how Moses went on and excused him- 
self on the ground that he wasn't eloquent, and he wasn't this, 
or that, and they wouldn't believe that he had been sent. At 
last the Lord said : 

" What is that in thine hand? " 

Moses had in his hand an old dried-up stick. He might 
have got a hundred better ones if he had looked around ; but 
he took the first one he came across and carried it around 
Horeb, and yet with that he was to deliver the children of 
Israel. Was there anything more contemptible in all the world 
than that old dried-up stick? Suppose that Moses on his way 
down to Egypt had met one of these modern free-thinkers, 
and he had asked : 

" Moses, where are you going? " 

" Down to Egypt." 

"What business takes you down there?" 

" I am going to demand of Pharaoh to let the children of 
Israel go free." 

" But Moses, do you know that Pharaoh is one of the 
mightiest monarchs on the face of the earth ? Do you tell me 
that you are going down there to free those three millions of 
slaves ? How are you going to do it ? " 

" With this stick." 

When we had three millions of slaves in this country, it 
took the lives of about half a million of men on both sides, a 
mint of money, and four years of hard fighting, to set them free ; 
how was one man going to set the children of Israel free that 
had nothing but an old stick to do it with, that you would have 
thought good for nothing, and that he could not make any 
good use of? But when God had linked Himself with that rod, 
it did its work well. When he went into the presence of 
Pharaoh and demanded of him that all the children of Israel 
should go free, Moses' stick became a serpent, and Pharaoh 
said : 



USING THE WEAPONS WE HAVE. 299 

" Then your God is a god of that stick ; well, you get out of 
here. I don't know anything about a god of that stick, and I 
won't obey Him." 

But Moses stretched out that stick over the waters of Egypt, 
and turned them into blood. That stick became famous in 
Moses' hands. All he had to do was to stretch it out, and 
plagues came over the land. Finally Pharaoh said : 

■" You get out of Egypt as quick as you can." 

When Moses came to the Red Sea, all he had to do was to 
pass that stick over the waters, and they were divided so that the 
people could pass through the sea dry-shod. He struck the 
flinty rock in the desert with it, and out flowed water for the 
people to drink. If God could use that dried-up stick, he can 
use you and me, though some of us are pretty dry, too. God 
can use us if we are willing to be used. It wasn't Moses or 
the rod ; it was the power of God in Moses, and the power of 
God in the rod that did the work. What is that in thine hand ? 
Take what you have got, not what you haven't got. 

W T hen they wanted to take Jericho, what did they do it with ? 
Rams' horns. You ; wouldn't like to see your ministers going 
around with rams' horns, would you? Wliat a comical sight 
it must have been to the people of Jericho, to see six thousand 
men going around blowing rams' horns. You laugh. Of 
course they laughed ; but I tell you the rams' horns did their 
work pretty well. The wall came tumbling down. They took 
Jericho, and that victorious army marched right through the 
land. Some of us may be as crooked as rams' horns, too ; but 
the Lord will use us if we are willing to be used. I don't be- 
lieve they had any silver trumpets in those days ; they couldn't 
get them, and so they got rams' horns ; they had plenty of rams' 
horns, and they took them and went to blowing them. Take 
what you have got and use that. 

Look again when Samson went out to meet a thousand of 
the Philistines. What did he take? The jawbone of an ass. 
You wouldn't like to take the jawbone of an ass ; you would 
want a Winchester rifle or a Damascus blade. The Philis- 



3oo 



WITH LAMPS AND PITCHERS. 



tines wouldn't let Samson have any weapons, and they thought 
he couldn't get any; but he got hold of the jawbone of an ass, 
and with it he slew a thousand men. Do you know of anything 
weaker as a weapon than the jawbone of an ass? Yet with it 
Samson did the work. 

Look at Gideon. Gideon had only thirty-two thousand 
men and Midian had 135,000, 103,000 more than Gideon had. 
Yet the Lord said, " Gideon, you have got too many men." 
So Gideon issued a proclamation to every man that was fearful, 
and to every man that was afraid, saying they could go back to 
the rear; and 22,000 men wheeled right out of line and went 
back. I can see poor Gideon as some of his generals, scared to 
death, flock around him and say : " O Gideon, you have made 
a big mistake. Look at that; two-thirds of the people are 
going." I think it would be a pretty good thing if we could 
have a sifting of the church and get all the doubters back to the 
rear. Gideon still had ten thousand men ; but the Lord said 
to him, " You have got too many yet ; take them down to the 
brook, and every man that lies down to drink, leave him there ; 
but every man that laps up the water as if he was full of fire and 
enthusiasm, let him go along with you." Nine thousand seven 
hundred of them lay down to drink, and that was the last that 
was seen of the whole lot of them. Gideon had now only 300 
men left, and the only weapons he had were pitchers, and lamps 
in the pitchers ! Wasn't it the height of madness for a man to 
go up against an army of 135,000 with 300 men armed only 
with pitchers and lamps ? Yes, that was all Gideon had ; but he 
went as the Lord directed him, with the cry of " The sword of 
the Lord and of Gideon ! " and the Midianites fell like chaff be- 
ford the wind ; Gideon took the whole crowd of them. Aren't 
you worth as much as a pitcher? 

It is very hard to make people think you are after them; 
they always think that you are after somebody else. Every 
man or woman ought to have a hand in this work. You don't 
want to be mere boarders. Go into a boarding-house, and you 
can always tell who the boarders are and who the guests are. 



THE SHEPHERD'S SLING. 3 OI 

The guests sit in the parlor, and take no interest in family af- 
fairs ; but a boy comes rollicking down stairs, goes through 
the parlor and sitting-room, looks at the mail, and makes him- 
self at home generally. He is a child of the house. The 
trouble with the church is that we have got too many boarders 
and too many guests, who do not take any interest in the 
Lord's work. 

There isn't a child so young, nor a disciple so weak, but that 
they can do something if they will. You can get a sling with 
five stones and go out against some Goliath. Shamgar was 
out in the field ploughing with his oxen, and a man came along 
and said, " Shamgar, run for your life ! There are six hun- 
dred Philistines coming." But Shamgar took his ox goad and 
slew the whole lot of them. I wonder what armies would be 
if they only had slings and ox goads for weapons. Saul came 
pretty near getting David into trouble ; he wanted David to 
put on his armor to go against the giant. Saul was head and 
shoulders above everybody else in the army, and there was too 
much room in the armor for David the stripling. But he 
obeyed the king, and put the armor on, and found that he could 
almost turn a somersault in it. So David said : " Take it off." 
Like most boys, he had a sling, and he said : 

" Let me take my sling. I am used to that." 

" What," they exclaimed, " a sling to meet the giant of 
Gath ! Why, he has a helmet, and a sword, and a shield, and 
an armor-bearer ! " 

" Well, I will only take my sling," said David. I can 
imagine how they made all manner of sport of him. 

So he went to the brook, and picked up five smooth stones. 
God uses weak things ; God uses little things ! You and I 
would have wanted some good big rocks to have thrown at 
Goliath ; but David got a few little smooth stones, and went to 
meet his enemy. The giant came out full of wrath, saying : 

" Am I a dog that thou comest to me with staves? " 

'' You come with a helmet," David said, " and a shield, and 
an armor-bearer. I come in the name of the God of Israel." 
19 



302 WORK FOR EACH ONE OF US. 

And he put one hand behind him and raised the other right 
up and threw his sling, and the giant fell dead ; and he rushed 
up to him, took his sword from him and cut off his head, and 
with the sword and the giant's head in his hand he went for- 
ward to the king. Then Saul called to his cheering army, 
" Make haste, rush upon them ! " And it was not long be- 
fore the whole camp of Philistines were falling before the 
enemy. So God used the man who was willing to be used. 
David could take good aim with his sling, because he was in 
good practice. What you and I want to do is to get into prac- 
tice with the weapon we have. 

Dorcas had only a needle ; but she understood how to use 
it, and she set it going, and consecrated it to the service of God. 
I believe she set more needles in motion than modern sewing 
machines have. Look at the Dorcas societies that have been 
formed ! Get your needle consecrated, and make up your 
minds that you will sew for the poor. Go and hunt up some 
poor families, and make up garments and take them to them. 
Make up your mind you will have a hand in the Lord's work ; 
that you will do something, and do it right away. I believe 
that when God laid out your life and mine He laid out work 
for each one of us. It is a false idea that if you don't do your 
work some one else will do it for you. There is not a man on 
earth who can do D. L. Moody's work; if I don't do it, it will 
be left undone ; I must answer for it when I stand before God's 
judgment seat. 

Never call anything you do for God small. Don't look 
down upon it. People say, " I will do what I can." That is 
just what you don't do. God don't want you to do what you 
can't, but He wants you to do what you can. I was a guest 
in a family a number of years ago, and when I arrived on 
Saturday night I was introduced to a young lady, a member of 
the family. Next morning, when I came down into the draw- 
ing-room, she was the first member of the family to greet me. 
We talked together, and she said she had a class in a mission 
school. 



A TEACHER'S MISTAKE. 



303 



" What time do you have your class ? " 

" At three o'clock in the afternoon." 

That afternoon I saw her right in front of me at the meeting. 
After we had returned to the house, I said to her : 

" I noticed you were at the meeting this afternoon." 

" Oh, yes." 

" I thought you said you had a class in a mission school ? " 

" So I did." 

" Did you get anyone to take your class for you ? " 

" No, sir." 

" Did you tell the superintendent you were not going to be 
there ? " 

" No, sir." 

" Did you tell your class you wasn't going to be there? " 

" No, sir." 

" How do you know that any one taught them ? " 

" I don't know that any one taught them, for I noticed that 
most of the teachers were at the meeting." 

" Well, is that the way you do the Lord's work? " 

" Mr. Moody, I have only five boys in my class, and I 
thought it wouldn't make any difference." 

" Well," I said, " If you look upon the Lord's work in that 
way, you are making a mistake." 

Who knows but in that class of little boys there might have 
been a John Knox, or a Wesley ; there might have been a John 
Bunyan, or a Martin Luther. One little boy may become the 
leader of a Reformation ; another boy may become a White- 
field, and may turn thousands and tens of thousands to the 
Lord. Do you suppose Mrs. Wesley knew what she was doing 
when she trained Charles and John for the Lord's work ? For 
a century, I honestly believe, no woman has ever done more 
than that woman did in training those two boys. There are 
millions of people who hear the gospel from the lips of Metho- 
dist ministers every week. There is not a denomination that 
hasn't men in its pulpits that have been converted at Methodist 
altars. Charles Spurgeon experienced his change of heart at 



304 



THREE GREAT WORKERS. 



a Methodist altar, and what a vast multitude have been going 
up to heaven because of this good man's work. Mothers, 
don't consider your work small. You can't tell how much 
you are accomplishing. 

Do you think there was anybody in Bunyan's day who 
accomplished so much for God as he? It was a good and 
great work to win the life of that Bedford tinker to Jesus 
Christ. All honor to that man in Maine who went to jail 
and found Francis Murphy and led him into the kingdom of 
God ! Do you think that man didn't do a grand work, a great 
service, who put his hand on the shoulders of John B. Gough 
years ago and saved him? 

And so I appeal to all. Win a soul to Jesus Christ now. 
A kind word and a gentle act will win for Him. Christ died 
that He might make us a peculiar people, zealous in all good 
works. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE COMPASSION OF CHRIST. 

An Incident of the Civil War — Sentenced to Death for Sleeping at 
His Post — A Little Girl's Faith in Abraham Lincoln — The 
President's Compassion — " Mother Will Come " — How Mr. 
Moody's Heart was Softened — Experiences Among the Poor — 
" Little Adelaide " — Sad Scene in a Drunkard's Home — " Can't 
You Help Me Find a Place to Bury Her?" — No Money to Buy 
a Shroud — "Papa, Suppose I Were Drowned" — Praying for a 
Tender Heart — An Unmarked Grave in the Potter's Field — How 
Mr. Moody Bought a Burial Lot for the Poor — A Remarkable 
Sequel — At the Grave of "Emma" — The Touch of a Mother's 
Hand — " Oh Mother ! Have You Come? " 

DURING the Civil War I remember reading of a young 
man, not twenty years of age, who was court-martialed 
and sentenced to be shot. The story was this : One 
night his comrade was going on picket duty and, being ill, he 
was excused and this young man was detailed to take his place. 
The next night he was ordered out himself; and, having been 
awake two nights, and not being used to it, he fell asleep at his 
post, and for the offence he was tried and sentenced to death. 
It was just after the order issued by the President that no more 
interference should be allowed in cases of this kind. That sort 
of thing had become too frequent, and it had to be stopped. 

When the terrible news reached his father and mother in 
Vermont it nearly broke their hearts. They had no hope that 
he could be saved by anything they could do. But they had 
a little daughter who had read the life of Abraham Lincoln, 
and learned how he loved his own children, and she said: " If 
Abraham Lincoln could only know how dearly my father and 

(305) 



306 A CHILD'S INTERCESSION. 

mother love my brother he wouldn't let him be shot." The 
little girl thought this over and made up her mind to go to 
Washington and see the President. She went to the White 
House, and the sentinel, when he saw her imploring looks, 
passed her in; and when she reached the door and told the 
private secretary that she wanted to see the President he could 
not refuse her. 

When she entered the room the President was surrounded 
by his generals and counselors, and when he saw the little 
country girl he asked her what she wanted. The little maid 
told her sad, simple story — how her brother, whom her 
mother and father loved so dearly, had been sentenced to be 
shot; how they were mourning for him, and if he was to die in 
that way it would break their hearts. The President's heart 
was touched with compassion, and he immediately sent a tele- 
gram revoking the sentence and giving the boy a furlough, 
so that he could go home and see his father and mother. 

I relate this just to show how Abraham Lincoln's great 
heart was moved to compassion by the sorrow of that father 
and mother; and if he showed so much tenderness and com- 
passion, do you not think the Son of God will have compassion 
upon you, sinner, if you will take that crushed, bruised heart 
to Him? He will heal it. Have you got a drunken husband? 
Go tell Him. Have you a profligate son? Go take your story 
to Him, and He will comfort you, and heal your sorrow. 

Once when I was returning from Europe there was a 
young officer on the steamer to whom I felt greatly drawn, 
because I could see that he was dying. It didn't seem to him 
that he was dying. Death is very deceitful. He was joyous 
and light-hearted. He would talk about his plans, and take 
out his guns, and tell how he intended to go hunting when he 
arrived; but it seemed to me that he would never live to see 
land. By and by he grew worse, was confined to his bed, and 
the truth came to him that death was near. He asked a friend 
to write a telegram, which was to be sent to his mother as soon 
as the vessel arrived. It read: " Mother, I am very sick. — 



THE NEED OF SYMPATHY. 309 

Charlie." " But," said some one to him, " why not ask her in 
the telegram to come? " " Ah," he replied, " Mother will 
come." He knew that when she read that telegram and 
learned that he wanted help she would come. It was the 
knowledge of his need that would bring her. So Christ is 
waiting to hear our need, and man's need brings out the help 
of God. The real trouble is that men don't think they need 
Him. 

Some time ago I began to read the Bible carefully to study 
Bible characters. I read through the four Gospels, and my 
heart was moved. When I look over an audience and think 
of the wretchedness and misery that you and I do not see, that 
He does see, I think I can understand what this passage means: 
" When he saw the multiude, he was moved with compassion." 
His heart went out towards them. 

A good many years ago, when a young man, I was fre- 
quently sent for to attend funerals. One day I was called 
suddenly to attend one, and I learned there were to be a great 
many young men and boys present who were not Christians. 
I said, this is my opportunity. I will give them a Christlike 
sermon. I tried to find one of Christ's funeral sermons, but 
I found instead that He broke up every funeral procession He 
attended. The dead could not be dead when He was present. 
He turned sorrow into gladness, darkness into light. 

What we ought to have is more compassion for the unfor- 
tunate, the erring, and the fallen. How many times I have 
had to upbraid myself for not having more compassion. I be- 
lieve it would be a very easy thing to reach the unfortunate and 
distressed if we had the spirit of the good Samaritan. People 
say, " I wish I had it." How can we get it? Listen. Sup- 
pose a great misfortune has overtaken you, wouldn't you like 
to have some one come right along and help you? Wouldn't 
you? I believe there is not a man or woman, I don't care how 
rich or poor they may be, who does not need; at some hour in 
their lives, a little human sympathy, a little ministration of 
love, or helpful words from somebody else. Each heart has 



3io 



PUT YOURSELF IN HIS PLACE. 



its own bitterness, each one has his own trouble and sorrow. 
We are too apt to think that others do not need or care for our 
compassion. 

Now if you want to get the spirit of compassion just think 
of some one among your acquaintance who is in trouble, — 
some one who is in distress, or who has had some great mis- 
fortune. And who has not? Then imagine that their trouble 
is yours, and that they are in your place. 

I have told the following story many times, but I don't 
know of any one thing in all my life that helped me so much 
to get into sympathy with those that need it. I used always 
to spend my summers in Chicago; probably fifteen hundred to 
two thousand children were in my Sunday-school, and very 
few of them had a church home. When sickness or death 
came into their families they used to send for me. When the 
ministers were away I was frequently sent for from other parts 
of the city, and I sometimes attended three or four funerals a 
day. I could go to a funeral and see a mother walk up to the 
coffin of her loved one, and hear sobs and wails of anguish 
that were enough to break a heart of stone, but I had heard 
them so often they wouldn't move my heart. I had become 
hardened to them. 

One day my wife told me that one of the children in my 
Sunday-school had been drowned. I took my little girl, four 
years old, and started for the home of the drowned child. 
When I got there some workingmen and women had dragged 
the little one's body from the water, and the mother sat by the 
dead child, stroking her hair, as the water was dripping down 
upon the floor. It was her first-born child. Little Adelaide 
used to go to the Chicago River and gather floating wood for 
the fire. That day she had gone as usual ; she saw a piece of 
wood, a larger stick than the rest, a little way from the bank, 
and in stretching out her hand to reach it she slipped and fell 
into the water and was drowned. There were four children 
in the room, and the husband sat in the corner — drunk. The 
mother said, between her sobs and tears: 



A SEARCHING QUESTION. 3H 

" You see the condition my husband is in. I have had to 
take in washing to get a living for my children, and I have had 
to care for him. He has never provided for us, or done a day's 
hard work in five years. Adelaide was my companion. I 
have no money to buy a shroud or coffin for her. Oh, I wish 
you could help me." 

I laid down the money for the coffin and the shroud. Then 
she said, as the tears rolled down her face: 

" Can you help me find a place to bury her? " 

" Yes," I said, " I will attend to that." 

I made a memorandum of what was wanted, and I did it 
all very mechanically. Then I took my little child by the hand 
and started out. When we reached the street my little girl 
said: 

" Papa, suppose we were very poor, and mamma had to 
wash for a living, and I had to go to the river to get sticks to 
make a fire; if I should see a big stick and should try to get it 
and should fall into the water and get drowned, would you 
feel bad? " 

" Feel bad! Why, my child, I do not know what I should 
do. You are my only daughter, and if you were taken from 
me I think it would break my heart," and I took her to my 
bosom and kissed her. 

l ' Papa," she said, " did you feel bad for that poor 
mother? " The child had been shocked at her own father. 
How that question cut me to the heart. I could not speak. 

I led the child home, then I went into my room, and turned 
the key in the door. I walked up and down the room all that 
day. I said to myself: " You profess to be a disciple of Jesus 
Christ, and to represent Him, and you went to that house of 
mourning, and didn't even pray with that poor heart-broken 
woman, and you left her there with a drunken husband." I got 
on my knees and asked God to forgive me, and to give me a 
tender heart, that if I ever saw people in trouble I might sym- 
pathize with them. I went back to that poor woman's house, 
and read the fourteenth chapter of John, and I told the mother 



312 



WEEPING WITH THQ5E WHO WEEP. 



where Adelaide had gone, and prayed that the Lord might 
heal the mother's wounded heart. We fastened the lid of the 
coffin, got a carriage and put the poor mother and her four 
little children into it, and, last of all, little Adelaide's coffin was 
put into the carriage with them. The husband was still drunk 
and did not realize what was going on. The cemetery was 
seven miles away. I had not been there for many years. I 
thought my time was too precious to go there. I said, " I 
can't let that mother go alone and bury her child," and I rode 
the seven miles and comforted her all I could. I could weep 
with her then. " Suppose it was my child! " was the thought 
that kept coming into my mind. 

We buried Adelaide in the Potter's Field. We had no 
sooner lowered her body into the grave than we were ordered 
off the place. As the mother tore herself away she turned and 
looked towards the little grave, and moaned: 

" I haven't always been able to pay my rent, and I have 
lived among strangers all my life. I have always thought that 
was hard, and Oh, it is hard! But it is harder to bury my 
Adelaide here, to leave her here in an unmarked grave in the 
Potter's Field. I am afraid I shall not know where she is 
laid." 

I thought it would be very hard for me to lay my little girl 
in a pauper's grave. I said to myself, " I will never bury a 
child in a pauper's grave again as long as I live." 

On the next Sunday I told the story before my Sunday- 
school, and, although they were all poor children, we raised 
money and bought a lot of our own in which a hundred chil- 
dren could be buried. Before I could get the deed made out 
another heart-broken mother came and said: 

" Mr. Moody, my little girl died to-day. Can I bury her 
in that lot?" 

" Did she belong to our school? " 

" Yes." 

" Are you poor? ' 

" Yes." 



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u You have no lot? " 

" No, sir " 

She asked me if I would go to the funeral, and say a few 
words, and bury her. I said I would. I well remember the 
first burial in that lot. The little grave was dug under an 
oak tree, and when we came to lay the child in it I asked the 
mother: 

"What was the name of your little girl?" 

" Emma," she said. 

That was the name of my own little girl, my only daughter. 
Do you think I could not grieve, that I could not weep and 
sympathize? 

In a little while another mother came. Her little boy had 
died, and she wanted to bury him in that lot. We made a 
grave close to Emma's grave. After making a few remarks, I 
turned to the mother and said: 

"What was the name of your boy?" 

" Willie," she said. 

That was the name of my only boy at that time. So 
strange that the first two little bodies let down into those 
graves should bear the names of my two dear ones. Do you 
think I could not weep with that mother, that I did not have 
compassion, and that my heart did not ache for her? 

Soon after, I went to Europe. I was gone a year and a 
half, and when I returned to Chicago, one of the first things 
I did was to go to that cemetery. The lot was filled with little 
graves. I have often said that I should like to be buried there 
with those little ones, and when my Master comes, and they 
rise to meet Him, I should like to go up with them. What we 
want is a heart full of compassion for those that need comfort. 
Have you got compassion yourself? Don't you think there's 
need of it? Ought we not to cultivate it? 

During the Civil War a mother received news that her boy 
had been wounded in the battle of the Wilderness, and she 
started at once for the front. Of course a mother would go. 
An order had been issued that no woman would be allowed 



316 THE TOUCH OF A MOTHER'S HAND. 

within the lines, but she got through in some way, and found 
her way to the field hospital. At last she found the ward her 
boy was in. She went to the doctor and pleaded that she 
might be allowed to nurse and care for her son. The doctor 
said: 

" Madam, you must keep away from him for the present. 
He is in a critical state; the excitement would be too great." 

" I have come six hundred miles, Doctor, to see my boy," 
she said. " I cannot wait." And she begged and pleaded so 
hard that finally the doctor said: 

" You can go quietly in and sit down by his side. Don't 
speak to him or wake him. When he awakes I will break the 
news to him gradually." And the mother stole to her son's 
bedside. When she saw him lying there so white and still, 
with the marks of suffering upon him, she could not resist the 
temptation to lay her hand gently on his forehead. And, with- 
out opening his eyes, he cried out: 

" Oh, mother, have you come? " He knew the touch of 
his mother's hand. 

Oh, my friends, that was earthly compassion, but what con- 
ception can you form of the compassion of Jesus?. He knows 
what human nature is; He knows what poor, weak, frail 
mortals we are, and how prone we are to sin. He will have 
compassion upon you; He will reach out His tender hand and 
touch you as He did the poor leper. You will know the touch 
of His loving hand, for there is virtue and sympathy in it. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

FAITH. 

Starving with Ten Thousand Dollars in the Bank — A Man Who 
Cannot be Pleased — Living on Creeds — "The Building is on 
Fire ! " — Going Out of the Window Head First — "I Never 
Thought of That" — How Mr. Moody Prayed for Faith — The 
Two Men who Planted Trees — "I Don't Believe In Roots " — 
The Beggar By the Wayside — " I've Got the Money, That's 
Enough " — The Little Invalid — Spelling with Crackers — A 
Message for Grandpa — The Box of Paints — "I Don't See It, 
But You've Got It" — Jumping Into His Father's Arms — " I'se 
Afraid, Papa " — A Touching Story — Waiting and Weeping by 
His Mother's Grave — "You've Been a Good While Coming" — 
The Prince and the Condemned Man. 

I DON'T believe any man or woman amounts to much who 
has not faith in somebody or something. 

People say, " What does it matter whether a man be- 
lieves or not? I don't see the importance of faith." If a man 
should tell me there were ten thousand dollars deposited in 
the bank in my name and I didn't believe it, and was starving 
for the want of it, I might die for the want of bread. All I 
have got to do is to go to the bank and draw the money, but 
I get no benefit from the fact that the money is there unless 
I believe and act. 

Some one has said that the three elements of Saving Faith 
are Knowledge, Assent, and Consent. Suppose I want to go 
to Europe. I know there are plenty of ocean steamers that 
will take me there in five or six days. That is knowledge. 
But if I don't go on board, I don't get to Europe any quicker 
than if I didn't believe. I may say to a man, " Sir, you may 
have this book for a quarter of a dollar," and he assents to the 

(3i7) 



3 18 THE IMPORTANCE OF FAITH. 

fact that I make the offer; but only when he takes the book, 
and appreciates it, does it become his, don't you see? He has 
got to act upon the offer. 

" Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence 
of things not seen." In other words, faith is dependence upon 
the veracity of another. Without faith it is impossible to 
please God. Do you know it is impossible to please yourself 
without faith? If a man should rise in an audience and say 
he had no confidence or faith in me I could do nothing to 
please him; it would be utterly impossible. And when a man 
says he has no faith or confidence in God how is He to help 
that man? He has cut himself off from God. 

Faith is very important. If business men lost faith in each 
other, how quickly all business would be brought to an end. 
Some people think when we talk about faith in Christ that it 
must be some miraculous faith, and that they must wait until 
it comes down from Heaven; that it is some sort of a shock 
which is to come upon them. 

Faith in Christ is the same kind of faith that men have in 
one another. If you have faith in a man, you do not hesitate 
to introduce him to your wife and daughter. Isn't faith like 
that the foundation of all social intercourse? Isn't faith the 
foundation of all commerce? Isn't it the foundation of family 
life? Isn't it the real foundation of everything else? It is 
not unreasonable that God should ask us to put faith in Him. 
Mark this, I do not ask you to put faith in Him without giving 
good reasons. 

We often hear people ask, " You do not think it makes 
any difference what kind of a belief a man has, if he is only 
sincere in it, do you? " My friends, it makes all the difference 
in the world whether a man believes a truth or a lie. If the 
devil can make you believe a lie, and that you are going to be 
saved because you are sincere in your belief in it, that is all 
he wants. Do not suppose for a moment that it does not 
make any difference what you believe in, or what your faith 
is, if you are only sincere. Do not be deceived by that terrible 



NOT CREEDS, BUT CHRIST. 



319 



delusion, which is one of the devil's lies. The faith you need, 
the faith that saves, is fixed upon the living Christ. 

I like a man to be able to give a reason for the faith that 
is in him. Once I asked a man what he believed, and he said 
he believed what his church believed. I asked him what his 
church believed, and he said he supposed his church believed 
what he did; and that was all I could get out of him. 

Now, I challenge any man to give a reason why he should 
not believe God. Give a reason, will you? Has God ever 
broken His promise to man? I believe there would be a 
jubilee in hell if man could break God's word. 

It is not belief in a creed only. A man may have a creed 
and no Christ. A creed is all right in its place, but if you live 
on creeds you will never get a living Christ. Suppose a friend 
should ask me to dine with him. To reach his house I must 
go in the street leading to his home; but if I do not go into his 
house I do not get my dinner. Now a creed is the road or 
street; very good as far as it goes, but if it does not take us to 
Christ it is worthless. God does not ask you to believe a 
creed, but a person, and that person is Jesus Christ. 

A man once said to me, " The doctrines you preach are the 
most unreasonable things under heaven. You preach that 
people are saved by simply believing. You cannot make any 
reasonable, thinking man believe that." " I can." " Why," 
he said, " how is a man going to be affected by what he be- 
lieves?" I said, "If that is your difficulty, I can make you 
believe in three minutes. You say a man is not affected by 
what he believes; that it does not affect his course of action. 
Suppose a man opens that door and shouts, ' This building is 
on fire! ' If you and I believe it, what will we do? Probably 
get out of that window head first." " Oh," said he, " I never 
thought of that." 

How are you going to get faith? If I could sum up all 
the time I have prayed for faith I believe it would amount to 
months. As President of the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation I used to call the young men together to pray, and we 



320 THE FOUNDATION OF HOPE. 

prayed for faith, faith, faith. We would close up the Bible, 
and pray for faith. One day I was reading the Bible and I 
came to the passage, " Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing 
by the word of God." I began to study the Bible, and faith 
has been coming ever since. You never saw a man who feeds 
on the Bible who did not have faith. 

It does not require much faith to put confidence in a good 
man. There are men I know whom I could not help but be- 
lieve in. Why? Because I have been associated with them 
for years, and I never knew them to be untrue. It does not 
require much faith, after all, to believe in the God of the Bible; 
but it does require a great deal of faith to believe in yourself. 
Let us keep in mind that if you take the Bible and study it you 
will have faith, and that faith will keep coming. 

Now, you and I and every Christian worker have been 
called to work for Christ. Behind you is your faithful God, 
and He cannot fail. If you will hand things over to Christ, 
and if you will count upon God at your back, it does not 
matter what happens, — your heart will be at rest. 

Some people say they don't see the importance of faith. 
Faith is what a foundation is to a building. If you build with- 
out a good foundation the house will soon have to be taken 
down. The man who has not a good foundation for his hope 
is like a man who builds a house on the sand. When the test- 
ing time comes, down comes the house. So with the man 
who has not a good hope in Christ, — his house comes down. 
That is the trouble. People haven't a good, grand hope. 

Suppose I hire two men to set out trees, and after a day or 
two I go out to see how they are getting along. I find that 
one man has set out a hundred trees and the other only ten. 
I say: 

" Look here, what does this mean? That man has set out 
a hundred trees, and you have set out only ten. What does it 
mean? " 

" Yes, but he has cut off all the roots and just stuck the 
tops into the ground." 



THE RIGHT KIND OF FAITH. 



321 



I go to the other man and say: 

" What does this mean? Why have you planted all these 
trees without roots ? " 

" I don't believe in roots, they are of no account. My trees 
look just as well as his." 

But when the sun blazes upon the trees they all wither 
and die. That's the condition of men without faith. Faith is 
the root of the tree, and what we want is to be firmly grounded 
in the Bible, and when the storms come we are secure. 

People say they haven't enough faith. I was told in Scot- 
land of a lady who was introduced to a minister as a woman 
of " great faith." She said, " No, I am a woman of little faith, 
but I have a great God." We talk about not having enough 
faith. But have you got faith in the living Christ? 

People say, " If you have the right kind of faith." Any 
faith that will bring you to Christ is the right kind. Have you 
a Christ who has saved you and is keeping you day by day? 
Have faith in the living God, not in the dried up creed of some 
church, — the Protestant Church, the Catholic Church, the 
Jewish Church. Not all these can save you. The churches 
are like Moses lifting up the pole with the brazen serpent. 
You must have faith in Christ. 

I once heard an Englishman use this illustration : A 
beggar sat daily by the wayside, and a gentleman who used to 
pass by would often give him a shilling. One day as he went 
by and tossed out his shilling the man said : 

" I do not need your money. I am not a beggar. My 
begging days are over. A man came by last night and gave 
me a thousand pounds." 

" How did he give it to you? " 

" He just put it in my hands." 

" How do you know it was good money? " 

" Why, I have had it tested. I have put it in the bank." 

" Did he put it in your right hand or left? " 

"Why? What do I care whether he put it in my right 
hand or left? I've got the money, and that's enough." 



322 



A CHILD'S CONFIDENCE. 



A gentleman had a little granddaughter who was taken ill 
with a light attack of scarlet fever and was placed in quaran- 
tine away from the rest of the family. And the old grand- 
father used to go up every night to see his grandchild and have 
a talk with her. Once when he entered the room she took him 
into the corner. She had some little crackers made in the 
shape of letters, and with these she had spelled out these 
words: " Grandpa, I want a box of paints." The next night 
when he came home he left his overcoat with the box of paints 
in it down stairs. She didn't seem to be much disturbed, but 
she said: 

" Grandpapa, I thank you for the box of paints. I haven't 
seen it, but I know you've got it." 

The old grandfather said he wouldn't have lost the confi- 
dence of that little girl for hundreds of dollars. That is faith. 

A child lives upon faith in his father and mother. Let us 
live in that way. I remember when one of my boys was two 
or three years old I put him on the table, and I said: 

" Willie, jump." And the little fellow swung his hands, 
and said: 

" I'se afraid." 

" I will catch you. Jump," I said. 

" I'se afraid, papa." 

" Willie, I'll not let you fall. Look at me." 

But the little fellow shrank back. He trembled with fear. 
I said to him: 

" Look at me. Jump." 

He jumped. And then he said: 

" Oh, put me back, and let me jump again." 

It wasn't long before he had too much faith in me. He 
would get up in a chair, and say, " I'm going to jump, papa," 
and I had to run to catch him. 

You like to have your children have faith in you, don't you? 
Of course you do. I was down in Alabama once, and a 
gentleman stood his two boys up on a fence post, and they 
jumped into their father's arms with perfect confidence. The 



TRUSTING WHOM WE KNOW. 



323 



father picked up a third boy, a little fellow who had been play- 
ing with the other two, and stood him on the post, but he 
wouldn't jump. He said: 

" Take me down, or I'll fall." 

He could not get that boy to jump. He said instead, 
" Take me down." I said to the father : 

"What makes the difference?" 

" Oh," he said, " he's not my boy. He doesn't know me." 

That's an infidel. You can't expect an infidel to trust God. 
He doesn't know Him. But get acquainted with God and you 
can't help trusting Him, can't help believing Him. 

The little child that reaches out his hand and takes a gift 
has faith. The best illustration of faith is a little child. Take 
that little girl — she lives a life of faith. She never bothers 
her head where her breakfast or supper are coming from. Her 
elbow peeps out of a hole in her sleeve; don't bother her a bit; 
she knows mother will get her another dress. Now, we are 
to have that same child-like faith. The nearer we can come to 
the faith of a little child, the better we shall please the Master. 

While the yellow fever was raging in a Southern city the 
father of a poor family who were strangers there was attacked 
by the disease. The father was buried and the mother was 
stricken down. She knew that she must die, so she called her 
little boy to her and said: 

" When I am gone, Jesus will come and take care of you." 

She had no one else to commend him to. The little fellow 
followed his mother's body to its burial place, and returned 
home. The night was dark and dreary, and he became fright- 
ened. He went back to her grave, supperless, and lay down 
and slept till morning, when he got up cold and stiff. While 
he sat by the grave weeping a stranger passed and asked him 
what he was doing there. He said he was waiting for Jesus. 

" What do you mean, my boy? " said the man. 

The boy told his story. God touched the man's heart, and 
he said: 

" Well, my boy, Jesus has sent me." 



324 HIS TRUST REWARDED. 

" Well," said the little boy, smiling through his tears, " you 
have been a good while coming." 

His faith was real, although it had been sorely tried. 

There is a story told in history of a political offender who 
was sentenced to death, and the crown prince had charge of 
the execution. Just before the prisoner was to be executed, 
the prince told him that any request he might ask of the crown 
would be complied with. The poor man asked for a glass of 
water. They brought it to him, and the very thought that he 
was so near death disturbed him, and his hand trembled so 
that he could hardly put the water to his lips. The prince 
said, " Do not be afraid. Your life is safe until you drink that 
water." And quick as lightning he dashed it on the ground. 

Take the Prince of Life at his word. " He that believeth 
on the Son hath everlasting life." It does not say he " shall 
have," but he hath. Have you got Him? If not take Him 
now. He is God's gift to you. Trust Him. Living or dying, 
sick or well, trust Him. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE ELEMENTS OF PRAYER. 

An Incident in Mr. Moody's London Experience — Four Hundred 
Conversions — Prayers of a Bedridden Saint — An Invitation 
from a London Physician — Praying for Fifty Years — Confess- 
ing to His Family — The Specter of the Five Bottles of Wine — 
"Oh, I Can't pray" — A Remarkable Story — A Family 
Quarrel — Wonderful Reconciliation of a Mother and Daughter — 
Meeting Half Way — An Impressive Incident — An Audience in 
Tears — " There is One Woman I Will Never Forgive " — An Un- 
converted Woman — Living on Grumble Alley — The Smiling 
Christian — The Carpenter who Cut His Thumb — " Bless The 
Lord! I Didn't Cut it Off" — An Astonished Father — The Load 
of Wood Stuck in the Mud — "I Wonder What's the Matter? " — 
An " Established " Horse. 

I HAVE no sympathy with the idea that if we ask God to do 
a certain thing He is going to give us chaff. If we have 

faith I believe He will answer our prayers. I don't be- 
lieve He mocks His children. I believe He will give out of 
His abundance, and give us the best He has. Now, I have no 
doubt a great many of you have said at different times, " What 
is the use of prayer, anyway? " 

One Sunday morning in London, I preached in a Congre- 
gational church, but with no unusual power. There didn't 
seem to be anything out of the regular line of the service. In 
fact, I was a little disappointed. I didn't seem to have much 
liberty there. That evening I preached to men. It seemed 
as if the building was filled with the glory of God, and when I 
asked for an expression, men rose by hundreds. I said, 
" They don't know what this means," so I thought I would 
put another test. I just asked them to step into the chapel — 
all those that wanted to become Christians, but no one else. 

(325) 



326 



FERVENT, EFFECTUAL PRAYER. 



They flocked into the chapel by hundreds. I was in great per- 
plexity; I couldn't understand what it meant. I went down to 
Dublin the next day, and on Tuesday morning I received a 
dispatch saying: 

" Come to London at once and help us." 

" I didn't know what to make of it, but I hastened back to 
London and labored there ten days, and four hundred names 
were recorded at that time. For months I could not under- 
stand what it meant, but by and by I found out. There was in 
that church a poor bed-ridden woman who used to take differ- 
ent ones upon her heart, and she began to pray God to revive 
the whole church. She prayed to God to send me to that 
church. One Sunday morning her sister came home and said: 

" Who do you think preached for us this morning? It was 
Mr. Moody, from America." 

The sick woman turned pale and said: 

" I know what that means, that is in answer to prayer. 
There is going to be a great work here." 

The servants brought up her dinner, but she said: 

" No, no dinner for me to-day, I spend this day in prayer." 

And that night while I was preaching she was praying, and 
in answer to her prayers the power of God fell upon the 
audience. 

I want to call your attention to ten elements of true prayer. 
When Christ got His theological students around Him, He 
did not teach them how to preach, but how to pray. And I 
think we often ought to make that prayer, " Lord, teach us 
how to pray." 

First, there is Contrition. I am sometimes ashamed of 
myself to think how fluent I am when I go into the presence 
of God. As if I were on an equal footing with Him; as if 
there were no difference between us. Let us bear in mind that 
God is holy. The nearer we get to Him, the more we shall 
think of His holiness and abhor ourselves. We shall grow 
smaller and He larger. One of the truest signs that a man is 
growing great is that God increases and he decreases. Why ! 



SINCERITY IN PRAYER. 



327 



some people will talk about themselves by the yard. " I, I, I, 
I." There will be forty-nine I's in a speech five minutes long. 
That is a sign that you are not growing in grace, but you are 
growing in conceit. But when we get near to God, how small 
we look, and how great God seems. When Isaiah saw God, 
he cried, " Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts." And then 
what did he cry? That he was unclean and dwelt with unclean 
people, and he wanted the coal to be taken off the altar and 
put upon his lips, that his iniquity might be purged away. 

There is no true prayer without Confession. As long as 
we have an unconfessed sin in our soul we are not going to 
have power with God in prayer. He says if we regard iniquity 
in our hearts He will not hear us, much less answer. It is a 
prayerless prayer and an abomination to God and man. What 
God wants is sincerity. 

How many men are there who are just living on empty 
forms? They say their prayers, but they don't mean any- 
thing. Why ! the Pharisee said plenty of prayers ; but how did 
he pray? He prayed with himself. He might as well have 
prayed to a post. He didn't pray to God, who knew his heart 
a thousand times better than he did himself. He forgot that 
he was as a sepulcher, full of dead men's bones; forgot that his 
heart was rotten, corrupt, and vile; and he came and spread 
out his hands and looked up to Heaven. Why ! the very angels 
in Heaven veil their faces before God as they cry, " Holy, holy, 
holy." But this Pharisee came into the temple and spread out 
his hands, and said: "Lord, I thank thee that I am not as 
other men are; I fast twice a week." He set before God what 
he had done in comparison with other men, and was striking a 
balance and making out God to be his debtor, as thousands are 
doing to-day; and then he said, " I give one-tenth of all I pos- 
sess." I suppose, if he were living now, and we should ask 
him for a donation to help build a church he would say: 

14 Well, I think it will do good; yes, I think it will — it may 
reach the vagabonds and outcasts — I don't need it, of course 
— but if it will reach that class, it will do good. I will give 



328 CONFESSION AND PETITION. 

fifty dollars if you will have it mentioned in the morning 
papers ; just have it announced, ' John Jones has given fifty 
dollars to the church building fund.' " 

That's the way some people give donations to God's cause; 
they give in a patronizing way. If your heart doesn't go with 
your gift, God will not accept it. The Pharisee said: " I give 
one-tenth of all I have; I attend the services in the temple; I 
fast twice a week." He fasted twice a week, although one fast 
only was called for; and he thought because of this he was far 
above other men. A great many people nowadays think be- 
cause they don't eat meat, only fish, on Fridays, they deserve 
great credit; although they go on sinning all the week. 

Look at the Pharisee's prayer; there's no confession there. 
He had become so bad, and the devil had so covered up his sins, 
that he was above confession. The first thing we ought to do, 
when we come to God, is to confess. If there is any sin cluster- 
ing around the heart, bear in mind we can have no communion 
with God. It is because we have sin about our hearts that our 
prayers don't go any higher than our heads. The Pharisee's 
prayer showed no spirit of contrition; there was no petition; 
he didn't ask anything from God. " Lord, I thank thee that I 
am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterous, or 
even as this publican." That is a queer kind of prayer. 
Not a petition in it. It was a prayerless prayer; it was down- 
right mockery. But how many men have just got into that 
cradle, and been rocked to sleep by the devil. A short time 
ago I said to a man: 

" Are you a Christian? " 

" Of course I am; I say my prayers every night." 

" But do you ever pray? " 

" Why, of course I do; haven't I just said so? " 

I found that he prayed, but he only went through the form, 
and after a little, I found that he was in the habit of swearing! 

" How is this?" I asked; " swearing and praying! Do 
your prayers ever go any higher than your head? " 

" Well, I have sometimes thought they didn't." 



A HARD CASE TO REACH. 



329 



My friends, if you are not in communion with God your 
prayers are but forms; you are living on formalism, and your 
prayers will go no higher than your head. How many people 
just go through the form? They cannot rest unless they say 
their prayers. How many there are with whom it is only a 
matter of education. 

The next true element of prayer is Restitution. It is folly 
for us to ask God to do something for us that we can do for 
ourselves. I don't believe that we preach restitution enough. 
If I have five dollars in my pocket that belongs to some one 
else and I try to cheat him out of it, can I pray? What we 
want is a revival of righteousness, a revival of uprightness. I 
sometimes hear a man say, " Hallelujah," and it rasps across 
my nerves like a file. I look into his face and know that it is 
not real. 

When I was in the north of England, some years ago, I 
met a woman whose case seemed one of the hardest to reach 
I had ever met. She came to the meetings constantly. She 
talked with me every day. She wanted to be a Christian so 
much, and yet something was in the way. Do the best I could 
I couldn't find out what it was. Finally there passed through 
the town a woman who was a devoted Christian worker. I 
said to her: 

" I wish you would talk with that woman and see if you 
can find out what is the matter." 

She talked with the woman and pleaded with her. She 
knelt down and prayed with her. She tried to get her to pray. 
After an hour of this, the trouble all came out. 

" Oh, I can't pray," she exclaimed. " Every time I kneel 
down to pray I can't see God's face. All I can see is five 
bottles of wine." 

It transpired that at some time in her life she had been 
housekeeper for a rich man, and he had fallen ill and died. 
During his illness several bottles of very rare wine had been 
sent to him. She stole five of the bottles. Years passed, and 
she had used the wine. Now the memory of that theft brought 



330 



THE MEMORY OF HER SIN. 



up the sight of those five bottles to confront her when she 
would turn to God. 

" Now," said her counselor, " your duty is plain. You 
must make restitution." 

" But I cannot. The wine is used, and the man is dead." 

" Take the money value of it, then, and give it to his wife." 

" I can't do that, either. She is dead, too." 

" Is none of his family living? " 

" Yes, he has a son in ," naming a town twenty 

miles distant. 

" Then you must take the money, and go and confess to 
him, and give him the money." 

" Oh, I can't do that. Won't it do for me to give the 
money to the church? " 

" Indeed not. The Lord doesn't want stolen money. 
This does not belong to you to give." 

Well, the end of it was that she finally took the money, 
about twenty-five dollars, and called on the young man. He 
was surprised enough. " But," he said, " it doesn't belong to 
me. Give it to the church." 

" I can't," she said. It isn't mine to give. You give it if 
you want to," and this he eventually did. 

Well, she came back with a radiant face. She hardly 
seemed to touch the earth. " Now," she said, " I have found 
that I can pray." 

Friends, there may be five bottles of wine standing be- 
tween you and Heaven. You can't bribe the Almighty. You 
may bribe the church and me, but if you are going into His 
kingdom, you can't be a sneak or a thief. Make restitution. 
If I've got five dollars in my pocket that belongs to another 
man, no amount of psalm singing and shouting " glory halle- 
lujah " will cover it up. 

The next element is Forgiveness. More people stumble 
right here and lose their power than anywhere else. Now, if 
I do not forgive just as I want God to forgive me I cannot 
pray. A man said to me some time ago, '* We have a magnifi- 



FORGIVE, AS WE WOULD BE FORGIVEN. 



331 



cent organ, a wealthy and cultured preacher, but we haven't 
had a man converted in our church. Can you tell me why? " 
" Yes, there are half a dozen families in your church who are 
not on speaking- terms, and the Holy Ghost cannot work." 
God cannot stultify Himself. He says He cannot work. If 
there is any one you are not willing to forgive, don't you see 
that you have broken down the bridge? And how are you 
going to get over yourself? Now, if you have had trouble 
with some one and have not forgiven him, go and have it 
settled before the sun goes down. God delights to answer 
prayer. But you cannot deceive yourself. If you are living 
a dishonorable life, God hides His face and will not hear 
you. 

I remember preaching in a place a few years ago, and on 
one side of the desk sat a mother who was greatly troubled 
about her sins and wanted to come to Christ. On the other 
side of the platform was her daughter. They belonged to a 
very wealthy family, perhaps the wealthiest in that town, and 
it had been known for a year that there had been a quarrel be- 
tween mother and daughter. They would not speak to each 
other on the street, and would have nothing to do with each 
other; yet both of them wanted to become Christians. I 
said: " I don't see how you can become Christians if you are 
not willing to forgive each other, and as it is a public matter 
and every one knows it, you had better ask each other's for- 
giveness right in the meeting." 

Well, the mother started. The daughter was not quite so 
willing. A mother's love is stronger than her children's love. 
But when the mother arose and the daughter saw her coming, 
she, too, arose and met her, and they asked each other's for- 
giveness before the audience, and confessed their faults one to 
the other. To me it was one of the most impressive things I 
ever witnessed in all my life, and I think one of the most 
powerful sermons ever preached in that town. There were 
sobs all over the house, and a great many were brought 
under conviction then, and inquired, " What must I do to be 



332 J° Y IN RECONCILIATION. 

saved?" Confess your faults one to another. If you can 
think of any one you have had difficulty with, go and have it 
straightened out, be reconciled, and then see how quickly God 
will answer your prayer. 

At a revival service in Michigan, a young lady was greatly 
troubled, and in answer to inquiries she said that her unwilling- 
ness to confess Christ resulted from a schoolroom quarrel 
which was still unsettled. She felt that she couldn't forgive 
her enemy. When she had told her trouble she asked for ad- 
vice. " Must I forgive my mate? " " Certainly, if you want 
God's forgiveness," was the answer of the minister. Imme- 
diately she ran with all her might to her old friend, and, instead 
of meeting a cold reception, they were soon crying on each 
other's necks. 

And so it always should be, and almost always there will 
be the same prompt half-way meeting betweeen those ag- 
grieved. My wife was laboring in the inquiry-room one even- 
ing with a lady who was in just this state of mind, and very 
soon reparation and complete reconciliation were effected, and 
the two old friends walked off arm in arm, happier than ever 
before their little misunderstanding. And one of those ladies 
felt so strong in her new-found charity for all that she won 
over her husband, and he openly confessed Christ. 

A man once asked me to go to his house and talk with his 
wife; she was anxious about her soul. I called upon her and 
talked and explained to her the way of life, and then I knelt 
down and asked her to pray. She made one of the most 
earnest prayers I ever heard. When she rose from her knees. 
I said: 

"Any light? " 

" No," she said, " it is darker than ever." 

I talked and talked, but she didn't see the way. The next 
day I went back again, but it grew darker and darker. Finally 
I thought of this test (I suppose God put it right into my heart 
just at that time), and said: 

" Let us repeat the Lord's prayer." 



THE UNFORGIVING SPIRIT. 333 

She began, and when she repeated " forgive us our 
trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us," I 
said: 

iC Can you say that from the heart? " 

" No," she said, " there is one woman I never will 
forgive." 

I had found it. We got off our knees, and I said: 

" It is no use to pray any longer." 

" What do you mean? " she said; " do you mean that God 
is not going to forgive me if I don't forgive that person? " 

" That is what He says; you cannot get all you ask for if 
you won't forgive, and you must not expect to." 

" Do you mean to say that I cannot get into Heaven with- 
out asking that person's forgiveness?" 

" Well, there is the word of God, and you cannot expect to 
be forgiven yourself if you are not ready to forgive others." 

" Then," she said, " I will not become a Christian! " 

The last I heard of her she had lost her reason, and some 
said religion had driven her insane; but it was not religion, it 
was the zvant of it. 

The next element that we ought to have in our prayers is 
Unity. When the church of God has had power with God in 
prayer, it is when they have been united. I have noticed that 
when we could get five churches thoroughly united, we have 
had good work, and if we could get ten it was a good deal 
better; and when they all get in one place without any discord, 
when every man and every woman just takes right hold with 
both hands, and the members all have one spirit and one mind, 
then it is that infidels hide their heads. But let division be in- 
troduced among God's people, let the church get to quarrel- 
ing, and it will produce more infidels than any lecturer can. 
The master-stroke of Satan to divide the church is a division 
among God's people. But if we are right, our hearts will be 
like drops of water flowing together, and there will be the spirit 
of brotherly love, the spirit of unity. You cannot find a place 
in the Bible where God's people were united that there was 



334 



PRAISE AND THANKSGIVING. 



not power. The last prayer that Christ made for His disciples 
was that they might be one, and every one of us ought to do 
what we can to carry out the spirit of that prayer. 

The next element is Thankfulness. " With thanksgiving 
let your requests be made known unto God." We don't want 
to help a person who is never thankful; and when people get 
to grumbling and are continually pressing us to help them we 
get tired of doing anything for them. I remember an old 
gentleman who arose in one of our meetings and said that he 
lived most of his life on Grumble Alley; but a few years ago he 
had moved over on Thanksgiving Street. He didn't have to 
pay any more rent than he did on Grumble Alley; the society 
was delightful, and he was among the best people he ever 
knew. The man showed in his very face that he lived there; it 
was full of praise and thanksgiving. You can tell these people 
as soon as you see them. I like to see them in my meetings; 
I like to hear them pray. It is a great thing to see a man full 
of praise and thanksgiving. 

I remember a man who was a carpenter, who used to be- 
long to the same church that I did. He always wore a smile 
— not a forced smile, but a natural one. Every time he got 
up in prayer-meeting a smile passed over the whole congre- 
gation ; a smile was on his face before he said anything, and he 
always began by saying, " Bless the Lord! " It wasn't one of 
those insincere expressions that we hear sometimes, it was an 
honest, hearty " Bless the Lord! " While at work one day he 
cut his thumb so that it only held by a little piece of skin. I 
said to myself, the next time I see that man he probably won't 
smile or say "Bless the Lord!" But at the next weekly 
prayer-meeting he was there, and the first thing he said was: 

"Bless the Lord! I cut my thumb, but I didn't cut it 
clear off." 

Most of us would have changed our shout into a wail, and 
it would have been a doleful sort of testimony. 

I would as soon get a blast of chilly east wind in March, 
right off the sea, as to meet some of those Christians who are 



SINGING IN THE DARKNESS. 335 

not thankful. Let us be cheerful, and bright, and sincere. 
If God has been good to us, let us give thanks. 

Now, some people may say, " It is all very well for Moody 
to talk about praise. If I were in comfortable condition, had 
good health and everything I wanted, like a good many others 
I see, I would praise God." I have found people who were 
poor in this world's goods, in bad health, and yet were con- 
tinually praising God. I can take you to a poor burdened 
one who has not been off her bed for ten years, and yet she 
praises Him more than hundreds of thousands of other Chris- 
tians. Her chamber seems like the ante-room of Heaven. 
It seems as if that woman has learned all the secrets of Heaven. 
Her soul is full of the love of God; full of gladness. My ex- 
perience is that a man who lives nearest to God praises Him 
most, whether he is rich or poor. The nearer he gets to 
Heaven, the more he praises Him. The man who is furthest 
from God praises Him least. 

Now, how is it that the church does not praise God more? 
I think it is very plain. The trouble is, we have settled down 
and gone to sleep. I never heard of a bird that sung in its 
nest, and I don't believe that any man ever did. It is when 
the bird is on the wing that it sings; and so it is when the 
church is up it sings songs of praise. It can sing in the dark, 
as a nightingale sings in the dark. It is only when we have 
been true to God that we can sing in the darkness. I am told 
that a lark never sings when coming down; only when mount- 
ing up. That may be true or not, but when a church is coming 
down, it is not a praise church. When mounting up, and it 
knows it is drawing nearer and nearer to God, it is full of 
praise. When the lark is mounting up, up, up, when it is 
nearly out of sight, its song is sweetest. And so when the 
Christian is rising up and drawing near to Christ, he gives out 
the sweetest notes ot praise from his heart. 

He who gets the most temporal blessings is the man that 
praises God least. A man may be thankful for those blessings, 
yet he does not praise Him. In fact, I don't believe that any 



336 



PRAISING ALL THE TIME. 



man can praise God till he is born of God. You may be thank- 
ful for His blessings, but praising Him is another thing. I 
don't know what those people who do not praise God here will 
do when they get into Heaven; they will be strangely out of 
place there, because praise is the occupation of Heaven. The 
redeemed praise Him all the time. 

A little boy whose father was a professed Christian was 
converted, and he was full of praise. He wondered why his 
father didn't talk about Christ, and why he didn't go down to 
the special meetings. One day, as the father was reading the 
papers, the boy came to him and put his hand on his shoulder 
and said: 

" Father, why don't you praise God? Why don't you sing 
about Christ? Why don't you go down to the meetings? " 

The father opened his eyes, and looked at him and said 
gruffly : 

" I am not carried away with any of these things. I'm 
established." 

A few days after, they were getting in a load of wood. 
They put it on the cart. The father and the boy got on top of 
the load and tried to start the horse. They used the whip, but 
the horse wouldn't move. They got off and tried to push the 
wagon along, but they could neither move wagon or horse. 

" I wonder what's the matter? " said the father. 

" He's established," replied the boy. 

That is the way with a good many Christians. 

If things go against you, just think they might be a good 
deal worse. A man who was in the Union army used to say 
he could always tell when a Christian addressed a soldier. 
One man would say: 

" I see you've lost your leg. Where did you lose it? " 

" In the war." 

" What a pity you ever went into the army. I feel sorry 
for you." 

Another would come along: 

" I see you've lost an arm ; were you in the war? " 



THANK GOD FOR COMMON GIFTS. 337 

" Yes." 

"Well, that is a pity; but, bless God, you didn't lose the 
other arm." 

There was a poor afflicted man living in Chicago, and I 
never came out of his house without praising God. He was 
deaf, dumb, blind, and had the lockjaw. He had a hole be- 
tween his teeth, and all the food he took was put through that 
hole. My friend, do you ever thank God for your senses? 
Do you ever thank God for your eyes, by which you can read 
His Word? Think of the three millions of people in this world 
who haven't any sight at all. Hundreds of thousands of them 
never saw the mother who gave them birth ; never saw their 
own offspring; never saw nature in all its glory; never saw the 
beautiful sun and the stars. Do you ever praise God for the 
ears by which you can hear the voice of man, by which you 
hear the Gospel preached, by which you hear the songs of 
Zion? Did you ever praise Him for your reason? 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE ELEMENTS OF PRAYER — Continued. 

The Boy Who Wanted a Razor — Thrilling Incident in Mr. Moody's 
Life — The Imperiled Steamer — A Tiny Light over the Waves — 
Rescuing a Ship's Passengers from a Watery Grave — A Re- 
markable Answer to Prayer — The Boy Who Wanted a 
Bicycle — Pleading for a Father's Life — Wonderful Work of a 
Bedridden Boy — Mr. Moody Prays for His Brother Twenty 
Years — Praying for Ridiculous Things — Praying on the Way 
Home — Knocking at the Door — " My Heart is Breaking " — A 
Wonderful Story of Answer to Prayer — A Mother's Earnest 
Appeal — The Prayer in the Woods — An Incident in Nashville 
during the Civil War — The Soldier's Letter — "Chaplain, Won't 
You Read That " — Reminiscences of the Civil War — Emma and 
Her Doll — Mr. Moody's Experience with an Audience of Cam- 
bridge Students — Trying to Break up the Meeting. 

ANOTHER element of true prayer is Faith, — faith to be 
lieve that God not only hears, but is going to give an an- 
swer to prayer. I honestly believe that if we meet that 
condition our prayers will be answered. Some people have an 
idea that God must say " Yes " to everything we ask, or else 
He doesn't answer. Now when He says " No," it is just as 
much an answer as when He says " Yes," and sometimes it is 
a better answer. 

We should get a good many things we ask for if God did 
not love us too well to answer all our prayers. A man was 
once shaving himself, and his little boy came up and said : 
" Father, let me have the razor." 
" Why, my boy, what do you want it for? " 
" Oh, I just want to whittle a little with it; I just want to 
play with it." 

" No, I cannot let you have it, my boy. You will cut your- 
self." 

(338) 



IN PERIL UPON THE SEA. 33Q 

" No, I won't ! I want it, it shines so ! " 

" You cannot have it." 

And the little fellow sat down and cried as though his heart 
would break, and said his father didn't love him, because he 
wouldn't give him the razor. Do you say the father did not 
love the boy? He loved him too well to grant a foolish re- 
quest. Now, there are a great many of God's people who are 
just like this little boy. They are praying for razors. God 
knows what we need better than we do. 

I was on the disabled ocean steamer Spree in 1892, when 
for forty-eight hours it seemed certain that we would go down. 
Protestants, Jews, Catholics, and all, prayed there. Our 
danger swept skeptics off their feet. I had a discussion with 
a man only the night before, and he said prayer was an exercise 
for the man that made it, — the Lord didn't hear it. But it 
was a wholesome exercise ; it would teach us submission. I was 
greatly cast down on that vessel. My wife and two children 
were on this side of the ocean. I had been away from my 
country a long while, and was returning home. I just longed 
to get to my family. I lay awake that Saturday morning at 
daybreak, and felt the old boat tremble. Then the lifeboats 
were launched, and the life preservers were brought up on 
deck, and we were told to put them on. It looked as if it were 
to be a leap into the ocean. But all that day my heart was 
peaceful. Sunday came. The moment you spoke to people 
about their souls they would tremble like aspen leaves ; they 
thought we were going down instantly. Some one may say : 
" What an opportunity you had for doing good ! " A poor 
opportunity. During a great calamity is a pretty poor time 
to preach to people. 

There was never a more earnest prayer to God than that of 
those seven hundred souls on that helpless, almost sinking ship 
in mid ocean. We were drifting out of the track of vessels, and 
our peril was extreme. 

Sunday, evening, Nov. 27th, we gathered together to im- 
plore God's help, and I read the ninety-first Psalm ; and when 



340 



THE STAR OF HOPE. 



I read that verse, " I will be with him in trouble," my burden 
rolled away, and light burst in upon me. From that hour I 
was as calm as a little babe I saw in its mother's arms. I went 
to my berth and lay down, and slept as soundly as ever. I 
said, " I may be in Heaven when I awake. But I may reach 
Northfield. This boat can't go down without the will of God, 
and if it is the will of God that I should go to Heaven, His will 
be done." 

About 2.15 that morning my son came to my stateroom and 
awakened me, telling me to come on deck. There he pointed 
out in the dim distance a tiny light that we could occasionally 
catch a glimpse of as it shone over the waves as our ship rolled 
heavily from side to side. " It is our star of Bethlehem," I 
said, " and our prayers are answered." Before daylight the 
Huron, whose masthead light it was, had reached us, and the 
waves were stilled and the winds were hushed by divine com- 
mand, while we were drawn out of the direst peril to a safe 
haven. God answered our prayer. He sent us a rescuing 
ship, and He calmed the ocean so that for a week it was as 
smooth as a harbor. It was a grand test of prayer. 

God does not always take the thorns away, but He gives 
more grace. Trust God, and He will give you grace to bear 
the thorn and bring you nearer to Him. So, if all your prayers 
are not answered in just the way or order you ask, don't think 
for a moment that God does not answer prayer. 

If I had a boy four years old who asked me for a fast horse, 
he would get an answer pretty quick, but he wouldn't get the 
horse. There are a great many things that our children ask 
for that they don't get. I want to have my children on such 
terms with me that they will come to know that I love them 
too well to give them everything they ask for. One of my boys 
went through all my sermons to turn what I had said about 
answering prayer into an argument that he ought to have a 
bicycle. Now faith believes that if God is to answer your 
prayers for your highest, best interests, He is going to answer 
them in His own way. 



earnp:st and constant prayers. 343 

Another element of prayer is Perseverence. God hasn't 
set the day that He is going to answer our prayers ; it may be 
long after we are in glory that our prayers will be answered. 
Many a boy has been brought to Christ long after his father 
and mother were dead. Many a boy has looked upon the face 
of his father and mother in their coffins and then turned to God. 
Many a young man has been converted at his father's grave. 

There is a story told of a governor of New Jersey who was 
besought by a woman to pardon her husband then under sen- 
tence of death. She came day after day until he was so dis- 
tressed that he gave orders not to admit her into his office — he 
could not be troubled any more with her. One day she gained 
admission by strategy, and she had her ten children with her; 
and they all fell on their knees and cried, " Governor, pardon 
our father ! " And the mother said, " For the sake of these ten 
children spare the life of my husband." It touched his heart and 
the life of her husband was spared. 

A little bedridden boy whom I knew, kept mourning be- 
cause he couldn't work for Jesus. The minister told him to 
pray, and pray he did ; and the persons he prayed for one by 
one professed Christ. When he heard that such a one had not 
accepted Him, he just turned his face to the wall and prayed 
harder. Well, he died; and from his little memorandum-book 
it was found that he had prayed for fifty-six persons daily by 
name, and before he was buried all of them had given their 
hearts to Jesus. Tell me that little boy won't shine in the 
kingdom of God ! 

We ought not to give men up as long as they are on earth ; 
while we have life ourselves, let us keep on praying. We can't 
tell when our prayers will be answered; it may take years. I 
remember when in England I was told of a lady who had a 
godless husband ; he had forbidden her ever to speak to him 
on the subject of religion. She made up her mind that she 
would pray for him at midday for a year. She prayed every 
day at twelve o'clock in her room, and yet she could see no 
effect. Then she resolved to pray for six months longer, which 



344 



PLEADING FOR SOULS. 



she did, and still no sign, no answer. The question came to 
her then, " Shall I give him up? " " No," she said, ' as long 
as God gives me breath and he lives, I will pray for him." 
That very day, when he came home to dinner, instead of going 
into the dining-room he went up stairs. She waited, and 
waited, but he did not come down, and finally she went to her 
room and found him on his knees crying to God for mercy, in 
that very room where she had prayed for him eighteen months. 
God heard her cry and answered her prayer. I believe that 
many can be reached in that way who cannot be reached in any 
other. 

I would like to take a leaf out of my own life to help those 
who have brothers very dear to them, but who are out of Christ. 
Many years ago, when God converted me, the first thing that 
came into my mind was my brothers. I began to pray that 
my six brothers and two sisters might be led to Christ. I re- 
member the first time I went home after my conversion. I 
thought I could tell them what God had done for me, and that 
I had only to explain it to have them all see the light. How 
disappointed I was when I left home that first time, after re- 
maining for a few days, to find that they did not see it at all. I 
was not experienced in pleading for souls then. Perhaps I did 
not go at it in the right way. But I kept on as best I could. 

A few years after, when I was in Chicago, a postman one day 
brought a letter that told me my youngest brother was given up 
by his physician to die. I went up into the fifth story of the 
building where I was employed, and if ever I prayed earnestly 
in my life I did then that my brother might be spared. He 
was the Benjamin of the family. He was born after my father 
died. The thought that he might die in his sins was too much 
for me to stand, and I wrestled with God in prayer. The next 
letter said he was better. When he arose from that bed I felt 
that God had answered my prayer, and that my brother was 
dearer to me than ever before. 

Many years after that he came to me in Chicago. I thought 
my opportunity had surely come, and I could lead him to 



A BROTHER CONVERTED. 345 

Christ. But he was taken sick again. The doctor said he 
might live a number of years, but that the best thing I could do 
was to take him back to Massachusetts. I took him home 
from Chicago to Northfield, all the way preaching Christ to 
him. He took no interest in what I said. I failed to influence 
him, although he seemed to love me very much. For fourteen 
years I kept him on my heart. I just kept on praying for him. 
Year after year I went back to the old home just to spend a few 
days with him that I might win him to Christ. He knew I 
wanted him to be a Christian, but he would not comply. He 
took no interest in the Bible, no interest in Christianity. He 
would talk politics, talk everything else, but you could not get 
him to talk of Christ. 

Later, I went to preaching in that town. During the last 
month I asked all those present in the church willing to be- 
come Christians to rise, and he, my long-sought brother, rose 
for prayers. What a precious relief for my heart ! He became 
an active Christian. And when they decided to have a Young 
Men's Christian Association in that town, and the young men 
wanted a president, they elected him. Oh, that was a blessed 
day for me, when my brother, converted to God, after twenty 
years of prayer, took charge of that little band. I heard him 
make his first speech, and it seemed the happiest day of my 
life. He was a young man of great talents, the most promising 
one of the family. No one of us could have done so much for 
Christ had he gone to Him in his earliest manhood. He went 
to work. He took a leading part in religious meetings. He 
talked with weak brothers and set them on their feet again. 
More conversions took place after I left than when I was there. 
Every Sunday afternoon he went into the country and took 
charge of meetings, and as I used to stand in the pulpit, and 
look down on him in his zealous work, no one but God knows 
how I rejoiced. 

God called him home in the midst of his work. For twenty 
years he had met me at the depot in Northfield, when I returned 
to the old home. I always found him waiting for me there. I 



346 SHORT BUT EFFECTIVE PRAYERS. 

never missed him. Sometimes I was three or four trains be- 
hind, but he was always waiting and watching for me. On my 
way home to attend his funeral that sadly beautiful hymn kept 
coming into my mind : 

" We shall meet, but we shall miss him, 
There will be one vacant chair." 

But over and above all these thoughts a voice from heaven 
made itself heard : " Thy brother shall rise again." The 
cloud was lifted, and for the last five hundred miles on my way 
home that verse rung in my ears. The Bible never seemed 
to me so precious as it did on that day. My call to mourning 
was the deepest I had ever known, for next, perhaps, to my 
wife, my children, and my aged mother, I loved none so dearly 
as this youngest brother. 

Now we come to the next thing, and that is Petition. A 
great many times we think we pray when we don't pray at all. 
Did you ever hear a man in the pulpit begin, and for ten or 
fifteen minutes go on with a eulogy of God, and there wasn't 
a petition in his prayer from beginning to end ? The prayers 
in the Bible that brought instant answers were very short. 
Take the Syrophenician woman's " Lord, help me ! " Peter 
prayed, " Lord, save, or we perish ! " Some one has said that 
if he had made as long a prelude as some people, he would have 
been forty feet under water before he asked the Lord to save 
him. Always speak out and ask Him for something. I be- 
lieve that a good many of our prayer-meetings are an abom- 
ination. We come and go, and have no definite asking, or we 
ask for things that are ridiculous. We don't expect anything, 
and we don't get anything. When you pray to God, ask Him 
for something, and then look for an answer. 

There was a man at one of our meetings in New York who 
was moved by the spirit of God. He said, " I am going home, 
and I am not going to sleep to-night till Christ takes away my 
sin ; if I have to stay up all night and pray, I'll do it." He had 
a good distance to walk, and as he went along he thought, 
" Why can't I pray as I go along, instead of waiting to go 



A MOTHER'S GRIEF. 347 

home?" But he did not know a prayer. His mother had 
taught him to pray, but it was so long since he had uttered a 
prayer that he had forgotten. However, the publican's prayer 
came to his mind : " God be merciful to me a sinner." It is 
a very short prayer, and it has brought joy — salvation — to 
many a soul. Well, this prayer came to him, and he began, 
" God be merciful to me a — ," but before he got to " sinner " 
God blessed him. He stood up in the young converts' meeting 
and told us that as he said those words the light of eternal truth 
broke upon his soul. 

" Ask and ye shall receive." Importunity has three names : 
Asking, Seeking, Knocking. Some blessings you get by ask- 
ing, others you get by seeking; but if they don't come from 
seeking, just keep right on knocking. The door may seem to 
be made of granite, but knock. I remember that in Phila- 
delphia when we had been there two days without much result, 
I asked all the mothers and wives who had unconverted chil- 
dren or husbands to meet me one morning. About 1,500 of 
them came together, and it was one of the most remarkable 
meetings that I ever attended. They seemed to touch one 
another's hearts in their prayers. A mother got up and wanted 
them to pray for her children, and after that they went on mak- 
ing requests. Finally, a mother arose and said : 

" I have two sons ; they have been out drinking and carous- 
ing for three days and three nights, and during that time I 
haven't seen them. Where they are I don't know ; but I know 
one thing, they are going to ruin as fast as they can. My heart 
is breaking, and I can't stand it much longer. God have 
mercy on me, and pity me ! " 

There were not many dry eyes in the room ; it touched a 
chord that seemed to vibrate right through the meeting. When 
the meeting broke up some godly women gathered around 
her, and they all prayed for those two boys. Then they said to 
her: 

" Instead of coming to the meeting this afternoon, wouldn't 
you like to have us go to your house and pray for your sons? " 



348 



BOTH SONS CONVERTED. 



At three o'clock these godly women rilled the widow's cot- 
tage, and they prayed together for those boys. 

During that morning the boys had separated for the day, 
but they had made an appointment to meet each other on the 
corner of the street where stood the church in which we held 
our meetings. One of them arrived before the other, and it 
being a stormy night and very cold, he thought he would go in 
and get warm. He became interested in the singing, and in- 
stead of going out to meet his brother, he remained. 

When I was through preaching I asked all the inquirers to 
go into the front room, and the young man went in. The 
other came to the street corner and waited outside, and when 
the first meeting was over, and the young men started to re- 
turn to the church, this man saw them going, and fell in line 
and followed them into the church, where he was brought under 
the Spirit's influence. The first brother went home and told 
his mother what had taken place, and while the mother and son 
were rejoicing, the other was in the inquiry-room giving his 
heart to God. The next Monday, when a meeting was called 
for young converts, they were present. There were not many 
dry eyes when we heard how prayer had been answered. One 
of those brothers stood up and told the story, and then the 
other rose and said : 

" It is all true, for I am that brother." 

Let us walk softly, pray earnestly, and pray for great things, 
and we shall not be disappointed. I remember in Nashville 
during the Civil War a big burly fellow came up to me weeping 
and trembling, and handed me an old soiled letter, and said: 

" Chaplain, won't you read that ? " And he added, " I think 
I am the worst man in the Army of the Cumberland. I haven't 
slept a wink all night." 

As I looked at the letter I noticed that it was stained with 
tears. I thought the man might have been drinking, but I 
found that he was under conviction of sin. The letter was from 
a sister, who every night when the sun went down, made it her 
rule to go into her closet, and pray God to convert her brother 



THE SOLDIERS' LETTERS. 



349 



six hundred miles away. He said that he had been in many a 
battle, and never trembled, never knew what it was to be afraid. 
" I want to become a Christian," he said. And he bowed then 
and there and took his sister's God for his God. At a meeting 
in the army I told this story and took the letter out and read it. 
A lieutenant arose and said : 

" I want to tell you that I have had the same experience ; in 
the last letter I got from my mother, she said, ' My boy, when 
you get this letter, won't you go alone into the woods, kneel 
down and pray that you may become a Christian ? I can't bear 
to think that my son is in such danger and not a Christian. I 
can't sleep! Oh, my boy, won't you become a Christian?' 
I put the letter in my pocket thinking there would be plenty of 
time. Little did I think that it was the last letter I should ever 
receive from her. When the news came that my mother was 
dead, I couldn't stand it any longer; I went off into the woods, 
kneeled down and asked God for mercy, and God answered my 
prayer, and this is the first time that I ever confessed my 
Master." 

That mother had sent up her petition to God, and He heard 
her cry and saved her boy hundreds of miles away. 

We didn't know in the awful days of the Civil War when we 
should hear that a loved brother, or son, or husband, was cut 
down ; but I believe we live in just about as dark days now. 
I believe our saloons are killing as many of our young 
men as that war did. Isn't it time for the church of God to 
rise and cry mightily to God day and night that our sons may 
be saved? Oh, mothers, I beg of you pray, work, wrestle with 
God ; make up your mind that you are going to lay yourselves 
out for God's blessing upon your children, and keep knocking 
until the answer comes. 

Pray for one another. We are told to pray for the house- 
hold of faith. I pity the child of God who does not want the 
prayers of God's people. A prominent man in one of our 
cities had an only son in the army, and he loved him better than 
life. But he was a conservative man, and when he came into 



350 PRAYER FOR A DYING SON. 

the meeting the people were amazed to think that a man of his 
high position should get up and present his son for public 
prayer. But God burdened his heart that morning to pray for 
his son as he had never prayed before. When he came into 
the meeting and asked us to pray, there were a great many who 
lifted their hearts in prayer for the son who was then in front 
of Richmond ; and during the day a telegram came announcing 
that he was mortally wounded and lay dying. He was shot at 
the very hour while we were praying for him. What comfort 
that father had ever after in remembering the prayers that were 
offered for him at that hour. If God burdens your heart don't 
be ashamed to pray yourself, and ask your friends to pray for 
you. 

Another element of prayer is Submission. After we have 
made known all our requests, say, " Father, not my will, but 
Thine, be done." Keep that in mind. Let the will of God 
be done. I cannot look a day into the future, and I would not 
dare to take the responsibility. It is far better for us to say 
" Thy will, not mine, be done." Submission ! Submission ! 

One of the sweetest lessons that I have learned since I have 
been in Christ's school is to be submissive, and let Him choose 
for me. I tell Him what I want, and when I get through I 
like to say, " Now, Lord, Thy will be done." 

I learned a lesson once from my little girl. She was always 
teazing me for a big doll — a great big doll. She had a lot of 
dolls around the house, some without heads, some without 
arms, some without legs, but she wanted a great big new doll. 
She was determined to get that big doll. One day I took her 
to a toy shop, and as she went in the door we saw a basket of 
little china dolls. They were about as big as your finger. 

" Oh, papa, isn't that the cutest little doll you ever saw? " 

" Yes, yes." 

" Well, won't you buy it? " 

" Well, now, Emma, let me choose this time." 

" Oh, no, papa, I just want this little doll." 

I paid a nickel for the doll and took my little girl home. 



THE LESSON OF SUBMISSION. 35 j 

After the newness had worn off the doll was left with all the 
others. I said : 

" Emma, do you know what I was going to do that day 
when I took you into the toy shop and you selected that little 
china doll?" 

" No, papa." 

" Well, I was going to buy you one of those great big ones." 

" You were ! Why didn't you do it? " 

" Because you wouldn't let me. You remember you wanted 
that little doll and would have it." 

The little girl saw the point and she bit her lips and didn't 
say another word. From that day to this I cannot get her to 
say what she wants. Afterwards, when I was going to 
Europe, I asked her what she wanted me to bring her, and she 
said, " Anything you like." 

It is far better to let God choose for us than to choose for 
ourselves. " Thy will, not mine, be done." 

W T hile in England we received a pressing invitation to go 
to Cambridge, and I refused. I thought I had no call to preach 
to universities. But, later on, when we were over there again, 
another call came, this time a signed petition six or eight feet 
long; and I said, " I will go." The meetings opened on Sun- 
day night, and I spoke to eighteen hundred undergraduates. 
For the first time in all my life an audience tried to break up 
my meetings. I had preached to all classes of people — to 
the hoodlums of California and other places — and never had 
that happened before. The students determined that no Amer- 
ican, nor unordained man, nor dissenter, should be heard in that 
great university, and they made such a noise with their canes 
and their feet that out of the eighteen hundred present, not more 
than fifty heard a word I said. Mr. Sankey sang " The Ninety 
and Nine," and they cheered freely. I said to myself, " Here 
I am for a whole week, and T must go through it somehow." 
It looked very much as if the students were going to snatch the 
whole thing out of our hands. 

On Monday night the disturbance was just as bad, or worse. 



352 



THE REVIVAL AT CAMBRIDGE. 



On Tuesday the outlook was darker than ever. But on that 
day a lady — a bedridden saint — who was very much inter- 
ested in the work, sent around an invitation to a few Christians 
to get together in a little upper room and plead with God for a 
change in those students. That turned the tide. It wasn't 
the preaching. They had heard better sermons. They had 
heard sermons from the best preachers of the Church of Eng- 
land. It was those earnest Christians in that upper room pray- 
ing to God that made the difference. And how they did pray ! 
It seemed as if their prayers burst right into Heaven. I said, 
" The victory is ours." 

That night I preached. I don't think I had much power. 
Then I said : 

" If any man in this audience wants to become a Christian 
will he go into the inquiry-room ? " 

The students had their gowns on — of course they were 
known, — and if you know anything about universities you 
know it is pretty hard to get the students moved. When I 
gave this invitation I didn't know that a single man would re- 
spond. But silence spread over the audience, and fifty-two 
men sprang to their feet, and went up into the gallery. That 
night we had all the inquirers we could attend to. About one 
o'clock — I was getting pretty tired — a man came to me, and 
said : 

" I wish you would come up and talk with this man." 

The students were on their faces crying to God for mercy. 
God had broken not only their stubborn wills, but their hearts 
were broken. I talked to him while the tears were running 
down his cheeks, and he found Christ that night. Some one 
said to me : 

" Do you know who that man is ? He is the senior 
wrangler at Cambridge." 

Among the three thousand students at Cambridge he was 
the best — the leader. There he was on his knees, and the 
power of God just came in answer to prayer. The next Sun- 
day night between two and three hundred students came for- 



PRAYER WINS ITS WAY. 353 

ward seeking Christ. Hardly a year passes that I don't get 
an invitation to come back to Cambridge. 

It isn't the preaching we want ; it is prayer. It wasn't the 
preaching that night that brought those students to Christ ; the 
preaching was pretty weak that night. I would rather be able 
to pray like David than to preach with the eloquence of Gabriel. 
What we want is to pray. Let us open up communication 
with Heaven, and the blessing will come down. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

CHRIST THE GOOD SHEPHERD — CHRIST THE 
COMFORTER. 

Binding Up Broken Hearts — The Deacon's Version of the Twenty- 
first Chapter of John — A Startled Preacher — Trying to Deceive 
the Flock — Mr. Moody's Misquotation Detected by an Old 
Scotch Lady — "Carl. Come Here" — Mr. Moody and His 
Brother Searching for a Flock of Sheep — The Better Land— No 
One Exempt from Trouble — Mr. Moody's Visits to the Sorrow- 
ing — The Deserted Wife — A Broken Heart in Every House — 
A Tragedy of the Sea — Mother and Children Go Down Be- 
neath the Waves — God Gives us Comfort When We Need It — 
Mr. Moody at the Grave of a Dear Friend — " I Can't Find the 
Brake" — An Unfortunate Excursion — The Parents' Grief — 
Tolling the Death-Knell — Mr. Moody's Childish Fear of Death 
— How it was Overcome — "Dust to Dust." 

CHRIST THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 

AT one of our meetings in London there was an old woman 
who was eighty-five years old and not a Christian. 
After one of the workers had prayed with her she made 
a prayer herself: " O Lord, I thank Thee for going out of 
Thy way to find me." He is all the time going out of His way 
to find the lost. Every broken heart, every bleeding heart, 
He will bind up. That is what God sent Him into the world 
to do. There is not a broken, sorrowing heart anywhere but 
Christ can heal it. 

The Lord, our Shepherd, is able to take care of His sheep. 
It would be a reproach to Him for all eternity if Satan should 
prove stronger than He. I always tremble when I hear a man 
defying Satan, and I want to add " By the Grace of God," for 
that is the only way. The Lion of the tribe of Judah will take 
care of him if he will come to Him. If some poor drunkard is 
trying to break the fetters of strong drink and become a free 
man, Satan laughs at him. He signs the pledge, and swears 

(354) 



THE SCOLDING MINISTER. 



355 



by all that is good and holy that he won't drink again, but Satan 
still laughs, for he knows he will have him down again inside 
of twenty-four hours. But if he comes to the Good Shepherd 
He will take care of him. All we have to do is just to follow 
Him, and wherever He leads us we are safe. And that to me is 
a very precious thought — "He leadeth me." 

People say they are not able to keep Christ. He will keep 
all who commit themselves to Him. The Saviour's work is to 
keep you, and if you go astray to bring you back. The man 
who had the hundred sheep did not say he would let the one 
sheep that went astray find its way back. He went out and 
searched until he found it, and when he found it he did not beat 
it, but he gently put it on his shoulder and brought it back. 

I heard of a young minister who took charge of a church 
that had long been under the care of an old pastor. He began 
to scold and find fault with the people, and he kept that up for 
six months. One day one of the old deacons asked him home 
to dine with him. After dinner the deacon asked him if he had 
ever read the twenty-first chapter of John. 

" Read it ! I hope I have read every chapter in the Bible. 
Read it? Why, of course I have." 

But the old deacon got his Bible and began to read aloud. 
He read to where the Lord is sifting Peter and testing him. 
"Peter, lovest thou me more than these? Beat my sheep. 
Peter, lovest thou me more than these? Maul my sheep. 
Peter, lovest thou me more than these? WALLOP my sheep." 

" Why," said the startled minister, " that isn't there, is it ? " 

" Well," said the deacon, " I just thought I would read to 
you about as you have preached to us for the last six months, 
and let you hear how it sounds." 

Feed my sheep ! I honestly believe we have too much 
preaching in the exhorting line. I believe that the church 
needs to be fed ; and where there is one sermon preached to the 
unconverted I wish we had one hundred preached to church 
members. The sheep must be fed, and that is just what the 
Good Shepherd will do. 



356 THE VOICE OF THE SHEPHERD. 

Some old divine has said that all of God's sheep have three 
characteristics. First, they hear; second, they know His 
voice ; third, they follow Him. 

They know His voice. A great many people cannot tell the 
voice of God from the voice of a false shepherd. A friend of 
mine visited Mount Lebanon some time ago, and two shep- 
herds with their sheep came down to the water, and he said he 
thought there were fully ten thousand sheep. The shepherds 
were talking while the sheep were drinking, and he wondered 
how they were going to get their sheep separated. At length 
one shepherd got up, put on his turban, and spoke to the sheep, 
and they knew his voice. All his sheep followed him. He 
didn't drive them. The other shepherd called his sheep and 
they followed him. My friend said to the shepherd, " Do all 
these sheep know you? Does each one of your sheep know 
you?" " Why, yes." " Can't you deceive them? " And the 
old shepherd laughed at the idea ; he thought it was too ab- 
surd. And my friend said, " Now, just let me try it. Let me 
have your frock and turban and you go behind a tree." He 
called out just as the shepherd had told him, " Mena, Mena." 
The sheep scattered in all directions. They knew it was a 
strange voice. 

The true sheep know a true shepherd. In Scotland I once 
quoted a passage of Scripture a little different from what it was 
in the Bible, and an old woman crept up and corrected me and 
said, " Mr. Moody, you said so-and-so." I might make forty 
misquotations in an American city, and no one would tell me 
about them. Two lawyers were wrangling in court and one 
said that the other didn't know the Lord's prayer. The other 
said he did, and he repeated, " Now I lay me down to sleep." 
" Well," said the other lawyer, " I give up. You do know it." 
Didn't either of them know it. 

Look for Christ and you will not be in the dark. Now, if 
men and women are in the dark to-day, it is because they have 
wandered away from the Shepherd ; because they are afraid of 
Him. Just draw near to the Shepherd if you want food, light, 



KNOWING THE SHEEP BY THEIR FAILINGS. 



357 



peace, and joy. Just follow. When I was a boy and went to 
school it wasn't a matter of feeling, but obedience. What we 
want is will power. The thing we are told to do is just to fol- 
low, and if we do we shall not walk in the dark. 

" He calleth them by name." I get a great deal of comfort 
out of the fact that the Shepherd knows me by name. He knew 
Saul of Tarsus. He knew little Samuel. The Good Shepherd 
knows us all by name. A friend of mine was traveling in Syria, 
and he found a shepherd who kept up the old custom of naming 
his sheep. My friend said he couldn't believe that the sheep 
understood when the shepherd called them by name. So he 
asked him if the sheep were all named and if they all knew their 
names. " I wish you would just call one or two," he said. The 
shepherd said, " Carl." The sheep stopped eating and looked 
up. The shepherd called out, " Come here." . The sheep came 
and stood looking up into his face. He called another and an- 
other, until he had called up a dozen sheep and there they stood 
looking up at the shepherd. " How can you tell them apart ? " 
" Oh, there are no two alike. See, that sheep toes in a little ; 
this sheep is a little bit squint-eyed ; that sheep has a black spot 
on its nose." My friend found that the shepherd knew every 
one of his sheep by their failings. He didn't have a perfect one 
in his flock. I suppose that is the way the Lord knows you and 
me. If a man is covetous, and wants to grasp the whole world, 
he needs a shepherd to keep down that spirit. If a woman has 
an awful tongue, and keeps the whole neighborhood stirred up, 
of if she is deceitful, she needs the care of a shepherd, or she 
will ruin her children. If a father, who wouldn't swear for all 
the world before his children, is sometimes provoked in his 
business and swears before he knows it, doesn't he need a shep- 
herd's care? I would like to know if there is any one who 
doesn't need the care of a shepherd. Haven't we all got fail- 
ings ? God would never have sent Christ into the world if we 
didn't need His care. We all are as weak and foolish as sheep. 

I am not much of a shepherd. I was at home one night, in 
my native town, and was stopping at my brother's. A neigh- 



358 SEEKING THE LOST FLOCK. 

bor came in and said to him, " Mr. Moody, your sheep have got 
out." And my brother got his lantern, put it under his coat so 
that we wouldn't scare the sheep, and we started out to find 
them. It was a very dark night, and we went into the fields 
and kept groping around in the dark, and once in a while he 
would open his coat and let the light shine out to see where we 
were. By and by we came to the flock of sheep, and they fled 
in all directions. I could tell by the face of my brother that he 
was disappointed. 

" Never mind," I said, " open the gate and they will be 
home in the morning." 

" You know more about preaching than you do about sheep. 
They will be scattered all over the mountain side," he said. 

We had a hard time gathering them in. They were very 
stubborn. So are we. We don't like to be told we are stub- 
born, but we are a bad lot, the whole of us. We wander away 
from the Shepherd, and get into a great deal of trouble. 

I wish I had time to dwell on the tenderness of the Shep- 
herd. I find that Satan takes advantage of some people be- 
cause of His tenderness. Suppose a beloved child dies, Satan 
says to the afflicted ones, " Ministers talk about the tenderness 
and kindness and love of the Shepherd ; don't you see how He 
has wounded you ? " My dear friend, don't let Satan get the 
best of you. A friend of mine in New York had four beautiful 
children, and scarlet fever came and swept them all away. The 
poor man tried to get comfort, but he couldn't find it. He 
traveled all through Europe, but couldn't get rest, and finally 
he went to Syria. One day he and his wife were near a stream 
and they saw a shepherd approaching with a flock of sheep. 
The shepherd went into the stream and called the sheep after 
him. They looked at him wistfully, but were afraid to follow. 
Finally he came out of the water and picked up two little lambs 
and put them into his bosom. The two old sheep, instead of 
looking at the water in fear, now looked up at the shepherd and 
began to bleat. They closely followed him into the stream be- 
cause their loved ones were there. By and by he got all the 



CROSSING THE STREAM. 



359 



sheep over into a greener pasture, into a better place, and when 
they were safely over he took the little lambs out of his bosom. 
The bereaved father and mother stood there and watched, and 
they said, " That is what the great Shepherd has done with our 
little ones. He has taken them across the stream into greener 
pastures, home to a better place." 

How many times the Good Shepherd has taken a little lamb 
to the hill-tops of glory, and then the father and mother have 
looked up and followed. Have you some loved one who has 
gone over the stream? The Good Shepherd has taken that 
loved one that He may draw you to that world of light, where 
He has gone to prepare mansions for those who love Him. 

Shall we not just let our hearts and affections be set on the 
other side of the river? It is but a step ; there is but a vail be- 
tween; we shall soon be in the other world. If we have the 
Good Shepherd, He will be with us in the dying hour. 

CHRIST THE COMFORTER. 

If I were to ask what Christ came into this world for, nearly 
every one would say " to save sinners," and there they would 
stop. A great many think that is all Christ came to do — to 
save sinners. Now, we are told that He came " to seek and to 
save that which was lost " ; but He came to do more, — He 
came to heal the broken-hearted. 

It is a mystery to me why those who have broken hearts 
would rather carry them, year in and year out, than bring them 
to this Great Physician. How many men and women are 
going down to their graves broken-hearted? For years and 
years they carry hearts weighted with trouble, and yet, when 
they open the Bible they can learn that He left Heaven and all 
its glory to come down to the world, -*- sent by the Father to 
heal the broken-hearted, to comfort all that mourn. 

There is no class of people exempt from broken hearts. The 
rich and the poor suffer alike. There was a time, when I used 
to visit them, that I thought all the broken hearts were to be 
found among the poor; but I have found there are as many 



360 HEART-SORROW EVERYWHERE. 

among the learned as the unlearned, the cultured as the un- 
cultured, the rich as the poor. If you could go up one avenue 
and down another in any city, and could reach the hearts of the 
people living there, and get them to relate the inner story of 
their lives and experiences, you would be astonished at the 
history of every family. 

I remember a few years ago, on my return to the city after 
an absence of some weeks, I started out to make some calls. 
At the first place I called I found a mother whose eyes were red 
and swollen with weeping. I tried to find out what was 
troubling her, and she reluctantly opened her heart and told 
me all. She said : 

" Last night my only son came home drunk. I didn't know 
that he was addicted to the use of liquor, but this morning I 
found out that he has been drinking for weeks ; and," she con- 
tinued, " I would rather have laid him in the grave than have 
had him brought home in the condition I saw him last night." 

I tried to comfort her as best I could. 

In the very next house I went to, where some of the chil- 
dren who attended my Sunday-school resided, I found that 
death had been there and laid his hand on one of them. The 
mother spoke to me of her affliction, and brought to me the 
playthings and the little shoes of the child, and the tears ran 
down her cheeks as she told me her sorrow. 

I hoped I should see no more family trouble that day ; but 
the next visit I made was to a home where I found a wife with 
a sad story. Her husband had neglected her for a long time. 
She said : 

" My husband has left me, and I don't know where he has 
gone. Winter is coming on, and I don't know what is going 
to become of my family." 

I tried to comfort her, and prayed with her, and endeavored 
to persuade her to lay all her sorrows on Christ. 

The next home I entered I found a woman crushed and 
broken-hearted. She told me her son had forsaken her, and 
she had no idea where he had gone. 



GRIEF THE COMMON PORTION. 



361 



That afternoon I made five calls, and in every home I found 
a broken heart. 

This earth is not a stranger to tears, neither is the present 
the only time they have been found in abundance. From 
Adam's day to' ours tears have been shed, and a wail has been 
going up to heaven from the broken-hearted. And I say it 
again, it is a mystery to me how all those broken hearts can 
keep away from Him who has come to heal them. For six 
thousand years that cry of sorrow has been going up to God. 
We find the tears of Jacob put on record, when he was told that 
his beloved son was no more. His sons and daughters tried to 
give him comfort, but he refused to be comforted. We are also 
told of the tears of King David. I can see him, as the mes- 
senger brings the news of the death of his son, exclaiming in 
anguish, " O my son Absalom ! would God I had died for thee." 
When Christ came into the world the first sound He heard 
was of woe - — the wail of those mothers in Bethlehem ; and 
from the manger to the cross He was surrounded with sorrow. 
We are told that He often looked up to heaven and sighed ; I 
believe it was because there was so much suffering around Him. 
Suffering was on His right hand and on His left — everywhere 
on earth ; and the thought that He had come to relieve the 
people of the earth of their burdens, and that so few would 
accept Him, made Him sorrowful. 

I often think of the difference between those who know 
Christ, when trouble comes upon them, and those who know 
Him not. Several years ago a father took his wife and two 
children to Europe, and when in mid-ocean another vessel ran 
into their steamer and she went down. Previous to this, when 
I was preaching in Chicago, that mother used to bring these 
two children to the meetings every night. It was one of the 
most beautiful sights I ever looked upon, to watch those little 
children as they sat and listened, and see the tears trickling 
down their cheeks when the Saviour was preached. It seemed 
as if nobody else in that meeting drank in the truth more 
eagerly than those children. One night when an invitation 



362 COMFORT IN AFFLICTION. 

had been extended to all to go into the inquiry-room, one of 
these little ones said: " Mamma, why can't we go in, too? " 
The mother allowed them to come into the room, and a friend 
spoke to them, and to all appearances they seemed to under- 
stand the plan of salvation as well as their elders. When that 
memorable night came, and the steamer sank, that mother went 
down into the waters ; she was rescued, but the two children 
were lost. 

Upon reading the news I said : " It will kill her," and I 
quitted my post in Edinburgh — the only time I left my post 
on the other side — and went down to Liverpool to try and 
comfort her. But when I arrived, I found that the Son of God 
had been there before me, and instead of my comforting her 
she comforted me. She told me she could not think of those 
children as being in the sea ; it seemed as if Christ had per- 
mitted her to take those children on that vessel only that they 
might be wafted to Him, and had saved her life only that she 
might come back and work a little longer for Him. So if any 
of you have some great affliction, if any of you have lost a loved 
and loving father, mother, brother, sister, husband, or wife, 
come to Christ, because God has sent Him to heal the broken- 
hearted. 

I like a religion that gives me such comfort, that when I 
lay away any loved ones in the grave, I know they will by-and- 
by hear the voice of the Son of God calling them forth. I used 
to wonder how Christians had so much comfort in affliction, 
and used to question whether I could have so much ; but I have 
learned that God gives us comfort when we need it. I once 
stood beside the grave of a man I loved more than any one on 
earth, except my wife and family.* As he was laid in the grave 
and the earth dropped upon his coffin, it seemed as if a voice 
came to me, saying: " He shall rise again." I like a religion 
by which we can go to the grave of our loved ones and feel that 
they will rise again. I like a religion that tells us although we 
sow them in corruption they will rise incorruptible; that al- 



* Mr. Moody's youngest brother. 



BE YE ALSO READY. 



3^3 



though we sow them in weakness they will rise in power and 
glory and ascend to the kingdom of light. Thank God for 
this : " I will not leave you comfortless ; I will come to you." 
O the blessed Gospel of the Son of God, what can we do 
without it? I was going into a cemetery once, and over the 
entrance I saw these words : 

Infidelity did not teach that ; we learned that from the Bible. 

There are three things which every man should be ready for 
in this world ; ready for life, ready for death, and ready for judg- 
ment. Judgment after death is as sure as life ; judgment is as 
sure as death. " It is appointed unto men once to die, but after 
this the judgment." It is of very little account how we die, or 
where we die, if we are only prepared for it. We ought to be 
ready any hour ; we know not what may happen any moment. 

Oh, my friends, the dying hour will come. We are hasten- 
ing on to death. If Christ is not your all in all, what is to be- 
come of you? When I was on the Pacific coast, some years 
ago, I was told about a stage-driver who had just died. You 
that have been there know that years ago men who drove those 
mountain coaches attached a good deal of importance to the 
brake; they had to keep their feet upon it all the time while 
going down steep mountains. As this poor fellow was breath- 
ing his last he cried out : " I am on the down grade, and I 
can't find the brake ! " Those were his last words. 

A friend of mine took his Sunday-school on an excursion 
on the cars. One of the little boys was allowed to sit on the 
platform of the car, when by some mischance he fell, and the 
train passed over him. The train had to go on half a mile be- 
fore it could be stopped. They went back and found that the 
poor little fellow had been mangled all to pieces. Two of the 
teachers went back with the remains to Chicago. Then came 
the terrible task of telling the parents. When they arrived at 
the house they dared not go in. They waited for five minutes 
before either of them had the courage to knock at the door. 



364 A CHILD'S FEAR OF DEATH. 

But at last they ventured in. They found the family at dinner. 
The father was called out — they thought they would tell him 
first. One of the teachers said to him : 

" I have very bad news to tell you. Your little Jimmy has 
been run over by the cars." 

The poor man turned deathly pale, and rushed back into the 
room where the mother was, crying out, 

"Dead! Dead!" 

The poor mother sprang to her feet and ran into the sitting- 
room where the teachers were. When she heard the sad story 
she fainted away at their feet. 

" Moody," said that teacher to me, " I wouldn't be a mes- 
senger like that again for all I have ! " 

You can't help but say that was sad ; but what was the loss 
of that little child in comparison with the loss of those young 
men who have grown up to manhood and rejected the Son of 
God, died without hope, died without mercy, died without 
excuse ? 

Before I knew the Son of God as my Saviour death was a 
terrible enemy to me. In that little New England village where 
I came from, it was the custom to toll the bell whenever anyone 
died, and to announce the age of the departed by one stroke for 
every year ; seventy strokes for a man of 70, forty strokes for a 
man of 40, and so on. I used to think when people died at 70 
and sometimes at 80, " Well, that is a good ways off." But 
sometimes it would be a child of my own age, and then it used 
to be very solemn. Sometimes, after the bell had announced a 
death, I could not bear to sleep in a room alone. Those were 
days of darkness to me. Some nights I was afraid to go to bed 
— I was afraid of death. People may say I was a coward, but 
nevertheless I was afraid of death ; it was so terrible to me. I 
remember the first time I put my hand on the face of a corpse. 
A cold chill went through me. I remember once acting as 
pall-bearer to a schoolmate of mine, and I did not get over it 
for days and days. Death used to trouble me, but, thanks to 
God, it does not trouble me now. If He should send His mes- 



TRIUMPH OVER DEATH. 



365 



senger this hour to say to me, " Mr. Moody, your hour is come, 
I have got to take you away," it would be joyful news for me ; 
for though I should be absent from the body, I should be 
present with the Lord. 

Sometimes I used to go into a graveyard when some one 
was being laid in that narrow house, and when the sexton 
shoveled the earth upon the coffin it sounded like a death-knell 
to my soul. I would hear him say, " Ashes to ashes, dust to 
dust." Now I can shout as Paul did ; I can say, " O death, 
where is thy sting? " Oh, the grave is lost in victory! It is 
lost in Christ. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

TRUST IN GOD GIVES PERFECT PEACE. 

False Friends — The Old Woman Who "Trusted the Lord Till the 
Harness Broke" — A Brave Missionary — "Now I Lay Me 
Down to Sleep " — Seizing the Last Rope — A Dangerous Feat — 
An Interesting Story of the Civil War — The Prayer of a Little 
Fatherless Girl — Asking God to Lend a Little House to Live 
In — The Story of Two Bibles Bought With Children's Money — 
Among Sick and Wounded Soldiers — A Soldier's Dying Message 
to His Mother — A Glorious Death — Mr. Moody's Experience 
in the Panic of 1857 — Starting Out as a Commercial Drummer — 
Three Kinds of Notes and How His Employer Marked Them — 
Expecting Something Dreadful — The Two Quakers — A Re- 
markable Incident — "Oh, Mamma, I Am so Tired !" — An In- 
cident of the Dark Days of the Civil War. 

I WANT to call your attention to one short word of five 
letters, T-R-U-S-T. You will find the word " Trust " is 
used in the Old Testament in places where the word " Be- 
lieve " is used in the New Testament. A great many people 
say, " Well, I will believe. I believe that Jesus Christ is the 
Son of God, and yet I do not think I am saved. I don't feel 
any assurance. I have no peace in my belief. I don't get the 
victory over sin." 

And so what I want to call your attention to is this: 
1. Whom not to trust. 2. Whom to trust. 3. When to 
trust. 4. How to trust. 5. Who will trust. 6. The fruit 
of trust. 

Now to take up the first point: Whom not to trust. If 
we trust in anything human, we shall be deceived and disap- 
pointed. If we trust in ourselves, the time is coming when 
our own strength shall fail us. If we trust in friends, they may 
die and leave us, or they may turn against us. How many a 

(366) 



WHOM SHALL WE TRUST? 367 

person can call to mind friends who once were true to them, 
but now friendship has ceased. You were disappointed in 
them; they betrayed your confidence. If we trust in wealth, 
it will take wings and fly away. A man once told me that he 
would rather have a good bank account than have faith in 
Christ. I'd rather have faith in Christ than own all the banks 
in the world. If you trust in fame and reputation, some slan- 
dering tongue may blast them. Put your trust in something 
above, something beyond this life. 

Now, whom to trust ? Trust in one who has never be- 
trayed confidence in six thousand years. He has never be- 
trayed a trust in all these centuries, never has, never will. He 
cannot break one of His promises. He is sure to make it 
good. The God of the Bible is an unchangeable God ; and if 
you put your trust in Him, you will not be disappointed. Some 
people seem to think that trust is unreasonable. My dear 
friends, I think it is the most reasonable thing in the world 
that we should put our confidence in the God of the Bible. 
Some one said to me, " How can you prove that His promises 
are good and valuable?" I said, "They are fulfilled every 
day, right along." Suppose a man had promised me forty 
years ago that every year, on the first day of January, he would 
give me a thousand dollars, and every year that has passed 
since then he has actually given me the money promptly on 
the first day of every January, — would I not have pretty good 
reason to think that that man would fulfill all his promises? 
I could doubt my own existence as easily as I can doubt God. 
It is a safe thing to put your trust in God. It is a very easy 
and a very right thing. 

Now, when to trust? We are to trust Him at all times. 
We are to trust in the night as well as in the day. We are to 
trust when we cannot see how things are coming out as well 
as when we can see. There's a common saying, " I wouldn't 
trust that man out of sight." That is the way a good many 
persons treat Almighty God. They don't say so in words, but 
they trust Him as far as they can see, and no farther. You 



368 



TRUSTING WHEN WE CANNOT SEE. 



have heard of the old woman whose horse ran away with her. 
She " trusted in the Lord until the harness broke," and then 
it was " all up." She had trusted in the harness. Such per- 
sons trust only when they can see that everything is coming; 
out all right. 

A person once said to me/' Your doctrine is unreasonable. 
How can you ask a sensible, reasoning man to believe, when 
he can't see how it is coming out? He can't see the end." 
My dear friend, we are doing that constantly. You put con- 
fidence in a bank. You don't know whether the bank will 
fail or not, and yet you trust in it. Isn't that so? What do 
you know about the banking business? I don't know any- 
thing about it. Yet I would rather have my money there than 
in my pocket. It is a good deal safer there than with me. 

A mother has an only child very sick with scarlet fever. 
What does that distressed mother do? She calls a skillful 
doctor and puts the case in his hands. She does not know 
much about medicine, but she puts her trust in the skill of the 
doctor. That is trusting when she cannot see, isn't it? Here 
is a man who has a case in court. He knows nothing about 
Blackstone or law, but he puts the matter in the hands of a 
lawyer, and trusts the whole thing to him. That is trusting in 
the dark when you can't see how it is coming out, and when 
you can't reason the whole thing out, isn't it? Now, then, put 
yourself in the hands of God, and trust Him to keep you, and 
to do what He has promised. 

I met an old gentleman not long ago whom I looked at 
with a great deal of admiration. He was a returned mission- 
ary. It was necessary for him to submit to a severe surgical 
operation ; and the doctor said to him : 

"Are you ready? " 

The old missionary straightened up and said: 

" Yes. Is everything else ready? " 

" Yes." 

" Well, wait a moment." 

And he repeated 



369 



THE LAST OPPORTUNITY. 

" Now I lay me clown to sleep, 

I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep; 
If I should die before I wake, 

I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take." 

Then he said, " I am ready." Of course he was. Thank 
God, our mothers taught us that prayer. 

In reply to the question " When shall I trust Him ? " I 
answer, uozv. Trust Him to-day to do what He has prom- 
ised. You will never have a better time nor a better day than 
now, this very hour. Some of you challenge that statement 
and say, " I'll wait until I can break off my bad habits, or con- 
quer a bad disposition," and so forth. My friend, if you could 
go on from this day and not add another sin but the sin of 
procrastination, you would not be able to do more than you 
can now. You can never trust in God better than now. 

A story is told of a man who was struggling in the current 
of a swift river. His boat had been capsized, and the stream 
was bearing him swiftly on. There were three bridges across 
the stream; if he passed the third bridge it meant sure death 
to him. People rushed to the first bridge and threw a rope to 
him, but he passed under and didn't lay hold of it. And he 
passed the second bridge and didn't lay hold of the rope. And 
he came to the third bridge, — his last opportunity. But just 
as he was passing, he seized the rope, and was pulled out of 
the jaws of death. It may be that God is calling you now for 
the last time. Make up your mind that this is the day and 
hour that you are going to put your trust in Him. 

And now comes the point : How to trust. The Bible tells 
us to " Seek Him with all thy heart." I never see men and 
women seeking the Lord with all their hearts that they do not 
find Him; none seek the kingdom of God with all their hearts 
that do not get into it. You can trust. Will you? 

It is told of Alexander the Great that he had a favorite 
doctor who was always near him. One day Alexander re- 
ceived a letter which stated that his physician was going to 
poison him; that the next morning, when he took his medicine 
in a glass of wine, death would be in that medicine. The em- 



37o 



THE EMPEROR'S CONFIDENCE. 



peror kept the letter to himself, and the next morning when 
the doctor handed him the medicine in the wineglass, he took 
it and held it in his hand while he read the letter aloud ; and 
before the doctor could deny the letter, the emperor drank the 
wine. That was to show the doctor that he had confidence in 
him, that he did not believe what was in the letter. That is 
what I call believing with all your heart. Now, there might 
have been poison in that cup; but do you think there is any 
poison in God's cup? He offers you the cup of salvation. Do 
you think it is poison and death to anyone that will take that 
cup? Do you think anyone can perish who will trust God 
for salvation? 

I pity those people who live in " Doubting Castle." You 
must get out of it. Don't say you will " try " to trust. I 
have heard some people say, " Mr. Moody, I am going to try 
to be a Christian.' That means you won't. If I should 
say to a friend that I would meet him to-morrow morning at. 
ten o'clock, and he should say, " I will try hard to believe you," 
it would prove that he did not trust me. And when a man 
says, " I will try" let him change it to " I will trust Him with 
all my heart, whether I feel like it or not." 

And now, who will trust. They that know Him. Why 
is it that infidels do not trust in God? They don't know Him, 
therefore they don't trust Him. Whenever you find a man or 
woman who reads the Bible, and studies the promises, you 
will find a man or woman who believes in God. They can't 
help it. But it is those who neglect the Bible and do not read 
about God who do not trust Him. Get acquainted with God, 
and then you will trust Him. The more you know of a true 
man, the more confidence you will have in him. The more 
you know of an untrue man, the less faith you have in him. 

A story is told of some gentlemen in Scotland who wanted 
to get a certain kind cf eggs from a nest on the side of a preci- 
pice, and they tried to persuade a peer boy to go over the cliff 
and get them. They offered him considerable money if he 
would get into a basket and let them swing him over the cliff. 



PEACE THE FRUIT OF TRUST. 



371 



But though the money was a temptation, he declined to do it. 
They said: 

" We are strong, and we will hold the rope." 

" Well," he said, " If you will wait until I get my father, 
and if he will hold the rope, I will go down the cliff in the 
basket." 

" We are stronger than your father," they said. 

" Yes, but / don't know you" 

He knew that his father would not let go of that rope. He 
could trust his father; these strangers he could not trust. That 
is the trouble with people. They do not know Him. Get 
acquainted with Him, and then you can't help but trust Him. 

Now I come to the last point : The fruit of trust. Man- 
kind is in pursuit of rest. That is the cry of the world. 
Probe the human heart, and you will find deep down in it the 
longing for rest. Where can rest be found? Here it is; right 
here. Put your trust in the living God, with all your heart, 
might, mind, and soul, and you will have peace, perfect peace. 

There is a passage in the Bible that I had never noticed until 
I was in Birmingham, England, a good many years ago. A 
prominent minister had died; he had received a large salary 
and had given it to the poor, right and left. He was stricken 
down in the prime of life, and when he lay on his dying bed, 
and thought of leaving his wife and seven children wholly un- 
provided for, great distress filled his mind. He was sorely 
depressed; he could not rise above it. While he lay there a 
little bird perched upon the window-sill, and the thought came 
to him, " If God can take care of that little bird, He can take 
care of my wife and children." The confidence of a child 
came into his heart, the burden rolled away, and there came 
light and peace and joy, and he passed away triumphantly. 
He had committed his wife and seven children to the God of 
the Bible. The text I had never noticed before is in the forty- 
ninth Chapter of Jeremiah, the eleventh verse, " Leave thy 
fatherless children, I will preserve them alive ; and let thy 
widows trust in me." . A s they bore the body of that good man 
23 



372 A CHILD'S FAITH. 

to the grave, the whole city was moved, both the rich and the 
poor, and all the way to the cemetery the streets were lined with 
people weeping; and his body was hardly laid to rest before a 
friend raised a purse of five thousand pounds ($25,000) for that 
widow. God took care of the widow and the fatherless chil- 
dren. My friends, I tell you I would rather have faith, and 
put my trust in the God of the Bible, than have all the wealth 
of the world. 

During the first year of the Civil War I visited my Sunday- 
school scholars in Chicago, and I went into a home where the 
news had just come that the father had been killed in battle. 
The mother was the first soldier's widow I had met. She had 
two little girls, one about three years old and the other five. 
A few days after, the landlord came for the rent. She told him 
her pitiful story. She didn't know what she could do to pay 
the rent; she didn't own a sewing machine; she must get her 
living with her needle; and she didn't know whether she could 
find work. The landlord told her that if she didn't pay her 
rent on the first day of the month he would turn her out of 
doors. She began to weep. The oldest little girl wanted to 
comfort her. Blessed little ones ! They light up our lives 
and cheer us in our loneliness. The mother, grieving for the 
loss of her husband, and fearing the bleak winter that was 
coming, gave way. Hope seemed gone. And the little girl 
said: 

" Don't cry, mamma. AVon't God take care of us? Won't 
He hear us? " 

" Oh, yes, my child." 

" Well, then, what makes you cry, mamma? Mayn't I go 
and ask Him to take care of us ? " 

She went into her room. The door was ajar, and the little 
one knelt down by her bed, and this was her prayer: 

" O God, You have come and taken away my papa, and my 
mamma hasn't any money to pay the landlord, and he is going 
to turn us out of doors. We will sit on the doorsteps and 
catch cold and die. Won't You lend us a little house to live 



THE CHILDREN'S BIBLE. 07^ 

in ?" Then she said to her mother, " Mamma, don't cry. I am 
sure God will hear my prayer. He will give us a home." 

1 just made that known among the business men of 
Chicago, and a lot was bought and a house put up for that 
woman, and it was, I think, the first house put up for a soldier's 
widow in Chicago. 

Not long after this she brought her two little girls to see me. 
They had a penny bank, and they said: 

" We want to do something for the soldiers. We want you 
to take this money and buy a Bible, and take it into the army, 
and find a soldier who is not a Christian and give it to him so 
that we can pray for him." 

The father and husband was gone, but the widow and chil- 
dren wanted to pray for some one. I went to the Bible House 
and got two Bibles and took them with me into the army, and 
when in front of Richmond I stood up and told the story. I 
held up one of the Bibles and said: 

" If there is a soldier here who is not a Christian, who wants 
to come forward and kneel down and take this Bible, and have 
the prayers of that widow and those little children in Chicago, 
will he come forward? " 

It is pretty hard to get a soldier to move in that direction. 
But they came forward by scores. I gave only one Bible, and 
that night several, — I believe- a great many, — started for the 
kingdom of God. The next night I was in another part of the 
army, and I told the story, and the soldiers sprang forward to 
get the Bible and the prayers of the children and the widow. 
I believe that God used this widow and her children to bring a 
good many into the kingdom of God. 

No man or woman who trusted in God was ever disap- 
pointed or ever will be. I once noticed a lady in one of our 
meetings who sat near the pulpit; and every time I looked 
down her eyes were riveted upon me. One day I said to her: 

" My friend, are you a Christian?" 

" Oh, no," she said, " I have been seeking Christ these 
three years, but cannot find Him." 



374 



"IT IS ONLY TO TRUST HIM." 



" There is some mistake about that," I said. 

" Do you mean that I have not been seeking Him? " 

" Well, I know He has been looking for you for twenty 
years." 

" What am I to do, then? " 

" Do? Do nothing; probably the trouble is that you have 
been trying to do." 

" But how am I to be saved, then? " 

" You are to believe on Him, and stop trying." 

"Believe! believe! believe! I have heard that word until 
my head swims; everybody says it, and I am none the wiser." 

" Well," I said, " I will drop that word for another. The 
word " believe " is used in the New Testament, and the word 
" trust " in the Old. I will say to you, trust the Lord to save 
your soul." 

" If I say I will trust Him, will He save me? " she asked. 

" If you really do trust Him He will save you." 

" I trust the Lord to save me," she said. " But," she added, 
" I do not feel any different." 

" I think you have not been looking for Christ; you have 
been looking for feeling. God does not tell you to feel; He 
tells you to trust Him; and you are to let feelings take care of 
themselves." 

" But I have heard people say they felt happy when they 
became Christians." 

" Well, wait until you become a Christian, and then you 
may talk about a Christian's experience; you must trust the 
Lord that He will keep you." 

She sat there five minutes, and then put out her hand to 
me, and said: 

" I trust the Lord Jesus Christ to save my soul." 

That was all there was to it, no praying, no weeping. 
The next night, while I was preaching, she sat in front of me; 
and I could see joy written on her face, and the light from 
fields of glory shining in her eyes. At the close of the meet- 
ing she was the first to go into the inquiry-room, and when I 



THE DYING SOLDIER. 



377 



went in there she had her arm around a young lady's neck and 
was saying: " It is only to trust Him." She led more souls 
to Christ in two weeks in that church than any other worker. 

Oh, my friends, there is nothing to hinder your trusting 
Him! If you trust, when Death comes he won't be unwel- 
come; he won't terrify you. I remember coming down the 
Tennessee River after a battle, and we had four hundred and 
fifty wounded men on board the vessel. A good many of them 
were mortally wounded. A few of us had gone to look after 
their temporal and spiritual wants. We made up our minds 
we would not let a man die on the boat without telling him of 
Christ and Heaven — that we would tell them of Christ as we 
gave them a cup of cold water. We found one young soldier 
unconscious. His leg had been amputated, and he was sink- 
ing rapidly. I asked the doctor: 

"Will this man live?" 

" We have amputated one of his legs, and he has lost so 
much blood he will probably die." 

" Is there anything you can do to restore consciousness? " 

" Give him a little brandy and water, and it may revive him 
for a few minutes." 

I gave him the brandy and water. Then I said to the 
wounded soldier next to him : 

" Do you know this young man ? " 

His eyes brightened as he answered : 

" Yes, we came from the same town ; we belong to the same 
company; we enlisted together." 

" Where do his father and mother live? " 

" His father is dead, and his mother is a widow." 

I thought the mother would be anxious to get some message 
from her boy, and I asked if she was a Christian. 

" Yes, she is a godly woman." 

" Has he any brothers or sisters ? " 

" He is an only son ; but he has two sisters," was the answer. 

I was anxious to get some message from the son to the 
widowed mother. Every once in a while I would speak the 



378 LAST MESSAGE. 

young man's name, and after I had spoken it a number of 
times, he slowly opened his eyes. 

" William, do you know where you are? " I said. 

" Oh, yes ; I am on my way home to mother." 

" The doctor has told me that you cannot live. Have you 
any message to send home to your mother? " 

" Tell her I died trusting in Christ," he said. 

Oh, how sweet it was ! It seemed as if I were at the very 
gate of Heaven. 

" Is there anything else? " I asked. He was sinking rap- 
idly, but he replied : 

" Yes, tell my mother and sisters to be sure and meet me in 
Heaven." 

In a few minutes he was unconscious, and in a few hours 
he died. What a glorious end ! " Tell my mother I died trust- 
ing in Christ." 

Some years ago a gentleman came to me and asked which I 
thought was the most precious promise of all those that Christ 
left. I could not answer the question. It is like a man with 
a large family of children, he cannot tell which he likes best ; he 
loves them all. But this is one of the sweetest promises of all : 
" Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on 
Thee : because he trusteth in Thee." 

There are a good many people who think the promises are 
not going to be fulfilled. There are some that you do see ful- 
filled, and you cannot help but believe they are true. Now, re- 
member that all the promises are not given without conditions ; 
some promises are given with and others without conditions. 

After the Panic of 1857 I went to work for a business man 
in Chicago who was going to send me out as a commercial 
drummer. I was to collect debts as well as sell goods. The 
day I started out he was very busy looking over a lot of notes, 
and every time I went into his office I saw him working on 
those notes. Just before I started for the train he called me 
in and gave me my instructions. He said, " I have here three 
classes of notes. You will see there is a private mark at the 



THE WAY TO COME. 



379 



bottom of each note. One class is marked ' B.' That is for 
your own eye. That is a ' bad ' debt. Get ten cents on a dol- 
lar; get anything you can, and settle that up. Here is another 
class of notes. You will find they are marked ' D.' I am 
afraid the man is going to fail. Get all the collateral or security 
you can. Get another man's name on the note if you can. Fix 
it up some way. Here is another class marked ' G.' That 
stands for ' Good.' Don't give any discount on them." They 
were all written the same, — all four months notes. It made 
all the difference who signed them. I find that the Church has 
divided up God's promises in pretty nearly the same way. 
Some they consider " Bad." But I want to tell you, always 
put down " Good " against every one of God's promises. 

It troubles many people a great deal as to how they should 
come to Christ. I have thought a great deal about that word 
" come," and tried to find a way in which I could make its 
meaning plainer to people, but I have at last come to the con- 
clusion that the only way to come is to come. One of the first 
things we were taught was to come. We were first taught to 
look and then to come. The little child learns to come to its 
mother by pushing its chair along when its mother calls 
" come." So I say to you, come ; if you can't run, walk ; if you 
can't walk, creep; but come, in some way. 

I was preaching in Chicago to an audience of women one 
Sunday afternoon, and after the meeting was over a lady said 
she wanted to talk to me. She said she would accept Christ, 
and after some conversation she went home. I looked for her 
for a whole week, but didn't see her until the next Sunday after- 
noon. She sat down right in front of me and her face had a 
sad expression. 

After the meeting was over I asked her what the trouble 
was. She said : 

" Oh, Mr. Moody, this has been the most miserable week 
of my life." 

I asked her if there was any one whom she had had trouble 
with and whom she could not forgive. She answered : 



3 8o 



FEARING TO CONFESS CHRIST. 



" No, not that I know of." 

" Well, did you tell your friends about having found the 
Saviour? " 

" Indeed I didn't ; I have been all the week trying to keep it 
from them." 

" Well, that is the reason why you have no peace." 

She wanted to take the crown, but didn't want the cross. 

" Why," she said, " if I should go home and tell my infidel 
husband that I had found Christ I don't know what he would 
do ; I think he would turn me out." 

" Well," I said, " go out." 

She went away promising that she would tell him. 

The next night I gave an address to men only, and in the 
hall there were eight thousand men and one solitary woman. 
After the services I went into the inquiry-meeting and found 
this lady and her husband there. She introduced me to him 
(he was a doctor and a very influential man), and said : 

" My husband wants to become a Christian." 

I took my Bible and told him about Christ, and he accepted 
Him. I said to her after it was all over : 

" It turned out quite differently from what you expected, 
didn't it? " 

" Yes," she said, " I was never so troubled in my life. I 
expected he would do something dreadful, but it has turned out 
so well." 

She took God's way and got rest. You may have rest. 

Two Quakers in Philadelphia attended our meetings, and 
every morning they talked about the sermons. One of them 
came forward and the Lord blessed him, and he wanted to tell 
his brother, but didn't know how to do it. The next morn- 
ing as the brother came down to breakfast, he said : 

" I can't take up a paper that is not full of Moody, and if I 
could read of any one's being converted in Philadelphia, I 
would myself be converted." 

" Look at me," said the brother, " I have been converted." 

" You don't mean it? " 



"BETTER AND BETTER. 



38l 



" Yes, I do." 

Well, the poor fellow couldn't say anything. That was in 
1875. I was in Philadelphia twenty-two years after and I met 
my Quaker friend, and I said : 

" How are you getting on ? Have you lost sight of Christ 
as your personal Saviour? " 

" Thank God, no! It is better and better.'' 

He " yoked " himself with Jesus Christ. If there is any 
odium cast on Jesus Christ, take your share of it, and you will 
have your share of glory by and by. Don't sneak of! like a 
coward. If a man has anything to say against Jesus Christ 
in your hearing, be ready to speak up for him. 

One day, in Wales, a lady told me this little story : An 
English friend of hers had a child that was sick. At first they 
considered there was no danger, but one day the doctor saw 
that the symptoms were very unfavorable. He led the mother 
out of the room and told her that the child could not live. The 
dreadful news came like a thunderbolt. After the doctor had 
gone the mother went into the room where the child lay and 
began to talk to her : 

" Darling, do you know you will soon hear the music of 
Heaven? You will hear sweeter songs than you have ever 
heard on earth ; you will hear them sing the song of Moses and 
the Lamb. Won't that be sweet, darling? " 

And the little child turned her head away, and said : 

" Oh mamma, I am so tired and so sick that I think it would 
make me worse to hear all that music." 

" Well," the mother said, " you will soon see Jesus," and 
she went on picturing Heaven as it is described in Revelations ; 
but the little child again turned her head away and said : 

" Oh mamma, I am so tired that I think it would make me 
worse to see all those beautiful things ! " 

Then the mother took her little one in her arms and 
tenderly pressed her to her heart. And the little one whispered : 

" Oh mamma, that is what I want ! If Jesus will only take 
me in his arms and let me rest." 



382 SAYING PRAYERS WITHOUT PRAYING. 

Dear friend, are you not tired and weary of sin ? Are you 
not weary of the turmoil of life? You can find rest on the 
bosom of the Son of God. 

When I hear a man say that he is a Christian, but is not at 
peace, I am always suspicious of his conversion. There are a 
great many men who want peace, but want to cover up some 
sin. You cannot have peace until you have brought that sin to 
Christ and He has put it away. 

Years ago my little boy had some trouble with his sister and 
he didn't want to forgive her. At night after he had knelt down 
by his mother and said his prayers, I went up to him and said : 

" Willie, did you pray ? " 

" I said my prayers." 

" Yes, but did you pray? " 

" I said my prayers. " 

" I know you said them, but did you pray ? " He hung 
his head. 

" You are angry with your sister? " 

" Well, she had no business to do so." 

" That has nothing to do with it ; you have the wrong idea, 
my boy, if you think that you prayed to-night." 

You see he was trying to get over it by saying, " I said my 
prayers to-night." I find that many people say their prayers 
every night, just to ease their conscience. Then I said : 

" Willie, if you don't forgive your sister, you will not sleep 
to-night. Ask her to forgive you." 

" Oh, yes, I shall sleep well enough ; I'm going to think 
about being out in the country ! " he said. 

That is the way that we frequently do ; we try to think of 
something else to get rid of the thought of sins, but we cannot. 
I said nothing more to him, but soon he called his mother and 
said : 

" Mother, won't you please go up and ask Emma if she will 
forgive me? " 

Then I heard him murmuring in bed, and he was saying his 
prayers. And he said to me : 



ABOVE THE CLOUDS. 383 

" Papa, you were right. I could not sleep, and I cannot 
tell you how happy I am now." 

I remember attending a meeting after the Civil War had 
been going on for about six months. The army of the North 
had been defeated at Bull Run ; in fact we had had nothing but 
defeat, and it looked as though the Republic was going to 
pieces. We were much cast down and discouraged. At this 
meeting it seemed as if every speaker had hung his harp upon 
the willow, and it was one of the gloomiest meetings I ever 
attended. Finally an old man with beautiful white hair arose 
to speak, and his face literally shone. " Young men," he said, 
" you do not talk like sons of the King. Though it is dark just 
here, remember it is light somewhere else." Then he went 
on to say that if it were dark all over the world, it was light up 
around the throne. 

He told us he had come from the east, where he had been 
up on a mountain to spend the night and see the sun rise. As 
the party was climbing up the mountain, and before it had 
reached the summit, a storm came on. He said to the guide, 
" I will give this up ; take me back." The guide smiled and 
replied, " I think we shall get above the storm soon." On they 
went; and they soon reached a place where it was as calm as 
any summer evening. Down in the valley a terrible storm 
raged ; they could hear the thunder roll, and see the lightning's 
flash ; but all was serene on the mountain top. " And so, my 
young friends," continued the old man, " though all is dark 
around you, come a little higher up and the darkness will flee 
away." Often when I have been inclined to get discouraged, 
I have thought of what he said. Now, if you are down in the 
valley amidst the fog and the darkness, get a little higher up, 
get nearer to Christ, and know more of Him. 



CHAPTER XVIIL 

EXCUSES. 

The Three Men Who Were Invited to a Feast — The Five Yoke of 
Oxen — The Sunday Newspaper — Sunday and the Bicycle — 
Death-bed Repentance — The Bridge of Sighs — A Hard Master — 
Mr. Moody's Efforts to Release a Man from Prison — Putting 
On the Uniform of Heaven — Hiring a Model — The Beggar and 
His New Suit of Clothes — Too Well Dressed — The Barefooted 
Beggar Boy — How He Obtained Five Pairs of Boots a Day — 
The Reckless Sailor Who Longed for a Better Life — Some of 
His Experiences — Blackballed — Quacks and Shysters — Drink- 
ing " On the Sly " — " A Church Member Cheated Me " — " Lies " 
and " Shams " — The Troubled Scotchman — One Way of De- 
clining an Invitation to Dinner — Two Excuses Men Seldom 
Give — A Bereaved Parent's Letter to Mr. Moody. 

THERE were once three men who were invited to a feast. 
It was not an ordinary feast, but a royal feast. The 
common people do not have invitations to royal feasts. 
I have been in England a good many times, but I never got 
sight of the Queen, I believe, and no invitation came to me 
from Windsor Castle. But you have to-day a genuine invita- 
tion to a feast ; a King wants you there, and He wants you to 
come a thousand times more than you want to go. 

These three men, with one accord, " began to make excuse." 
Now, notice the expression : " began to make excuse." They 
did not have an excuse, and so they manufactured one. Did 
you ever do that? You've been invited to places where you 
didn't want to go, haven't you? And you began to invent an 
excuse, didn't you? The first thing Adam did after he sinned 
was to make an excuse. To excuse ourselves we generally 
give the poorest one we can make. There never was a more 
cowardly excuse than Adam gave : " The woman whom Thou 

(384) 



FRIVOLOUS EXCUSES. 



385 



gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." 
He is a mighty mean man who hides behind his wife. You 
never saw a man who didn't have some excuse for his sin, and 
you can hardly find a man anywhere who has not an excuse 
ready on the end of his tongue. Ask a man why he does not 
become a Christian, and he will have a ready-made excuse that 
the world never heard of ; it will roll off his tongue like oil off 
marble. 

The first man who was invited to the feast said : " I have 
'bought a piece of ground and I must needs go and see it." 
Why didn't he go and see the ground before he bought it? 
I have no doubt he had paced every rod of it lengthwise and 
across, but when the time came to go to the feast, he remem- 
bered that real estate transaction, and so gave that as an ex- 
cuse. Perhaps he sent word back to the King that there was 
no one in all the kingdom he would rather feast with, but 
" Business before pleasure, so I pray thee have me excused." 
Real estate and corner lots keep a good many men out of God's 
kingdom. 

The next man's excuse was equally frivolous : " I have 
bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them." Why 
didn't he prove his oxen before he bought them ? But he had 
bought his oxen, and he now hid behind them. Almost every 
one else would have said, " I would rather be at the feast than 
miss it ; " but this man must prove his oxen, and away he went. 

The last man said, — and what an excuse ! — "I have mar- 
ried a wife, and therefore I cannot come." Now, I want to 
ask you : Did you ever see a young bride in your life that didn't 
like to go to a feast? This invitation was not meant for the 
husband alone, but for the wife as well. Why didn't he take 
his wife with him? But he wanted an excuse, and he said, 
" I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come." 

Now, you laugh at these three men. To you their excuses 
look very flimsy. Let me tell you they are outright lies, every 
one of them. These men were lying and the whole thing was 
a sham. 



386 THE MYSTERIES OF THE BIBLE. 

It is a sad thing for a man to say that he wants to be ex- 
cused from Heaven. Life is very dear to me. God has piled 
up blessings on top of one another, and I have never seen a 
time when I wanted to die. I want to live as long as God can 
use me. My work is sweet. God has given me a good and 
affectionate family. I would rather preach than be in Paradise. 
But, sweet as life is, I would rather be torn in pieces than hear 
sinners make frivolous excuses. 

Some people say, " Mr. Moody, the reason why I don't be- 
come a Christian is because there are so many things in the 
Bible I don't understand." Among such men I never found 
but one in all my life who claimed to have read the Bible 
through, and he could only quote one verse, " Jesus wept." 
As for the mysteries in that Book, I am glad they are there. If 
I could read that Book as I do any other book, I would 
have mastered it over forty years ago. I am glad there are 
heights and depths I have never been able to fathom, and 
lengths and breadths no man has ever been able to measure. If 
man wrote that Book, we could write another, and we could 
have thousands of different Bibles. If I could understand it 
all it would be pretty good proof that it did not come from God. 

Now, take the lawyers. How they dig at and study Black- 
stone, and after they have been studying it ten years they say 
they have not mastered it all. You never see men digging 
ten years at the Bible as lawyers dig at Blackstone. Here is 
a book that teaches not only the things of this life but of the 
life to come, and because people cannot understand the Bible 
as they do the alphabet they say it is full of contradictions and 
mysteries. 

You can never stand at the bar of God and give that old, 
bungling excuse for not becoming a Christian. Did you ever 
think how dark this world would be without the Bible ? Mil- 
lions of men have gone down to the grave because of their 
loyalty to it. I thank God I live in a Protestant country 
where I can read the Bible ; and every man in America ought 
to thank God he has got this Book, and he should stand by it, 



THE BIBLE OUR SAFEGUARD. 387 

and hold on to it, and not give up an inch. Anarchy and 
nihilism would sweep this whole country, and neither property 
nor life would be safe if it were not for the Bible. They have 
tried to stamp it out, but God has raised up witnesses for it. I 
think it would be a master stroke of the devil to get us to con- 
sent to give up even a portion of it. When a man leads a moral 
life he has no trouble with the Bible ; but if he is immoral, it 
condemns his sins and he begins to talk against it. 

Another man says, " It is not that I am against the Bible, 
but I like to read the Sunday newspaper." It will be a dark 
day for this nation when the Bible is given up, and Sunday 
newspapers are read in place of it. No man will stand at the 
bar of God and give that as an excuse. 

" Well," another man says, " I haven't time to go to church 
because I must have some recreation, and I spend Sundays on 
my bicycle." That is a new excuse. Hundreds of people are 
now giving up the Bible on account of " bodily exercise." Put 
the bicycle down as an excuse that won't bear presenting in 
Eternity at the bar of God. 

Another very popular excuse is : "I don't become a Chris- 
tian because I won't give up all the pleasures of this life. If 
a man becomes a Christian he has got to put on a long face, and 
walk straight up and down, and he has no pleasure 'till he gets 
to Heaven." Those who believe that are deceiving themselves. 
I was going by a saloon the other day and saw a sign, " Drink 
and be Merry." Poor, blind, deluded fellows, to think strong 
drink would make them merry. If you want to be merry you 
must come to the living fountain that bursts from the throne 
of God ; then you will have true pleasure. A man away from 
God cannot have true pleasure. He is continually thirsting 
for something he cannot get — thirsting for something that 
can quench his thirst, and he cannot get it until he comes to 
the living fountain. My friends, that excuse is just another 
wile of the devil to keep men from grace. It is false. The 
more a man is lifted up to heaven the more joy and peace and 
gladness he has. 



388 THE WAY OF THE TRANSGRESSOR. 

When I was a boy I thought I would wait until I was about 
to die before I became a Christian. I thought if I had the 
consumption, or some lingering disease, I should have plenty 
of time to become one, and in the meantime I would enjoy the 
pleasures of the world. My friends, I was at that time under 
the power of the devil. The idea that a man has more pleas- 
ure away from God is one of the devil's lies. 

I don't know how many times some one has asked me, 
" Don't you think it is an awfully hard thing to live a Christian 
life ? " I wish I could say with tones of thunder : " No, I do 
not." I believe the Bible from beginning to end, and when it 
says, " The way of the transgressor is hard," I believe it. Go 
down to the brothel, or the gambling den, or the whiskey shop, 
and see there a man bound hand and foot. He is a cursed sin- 
ner, a slave to some passion, some uncontrollable sins have 
the mastery of him. Ask that man if he has an easy time. 
Ask the defaulter, taken from a beautiful home and from loving 
wife and children and put into prison, if the way of the trans- 
gressor is easy or hard. Go into the court-room, and see there 
the old white-haired father with his son, the latter awaiting his 
sentence. Go ask the young man, " Is sin a pleasant friend? " 
Sin always degrades and pulls down to ruin. Let no man tell 
me that the way of the transgressor is easy, and the way of the 
righteous is hard. 

There used to be in the old Tombs in New York city an iron 
bridge that crossed from the court-room over to the city prison. 
I was told that it was called " The Bridge of Sighs." I asked 
the reason, and the answer was : " After criminals have re- 
ceived their sentence they go over that bridge to their cells 
weeping, and so it is called the " Bridge of Sighs." Over 
the door was written " The Way of the Transgressor is Hard." 

I met a young man on the street, in New York, one morn- 
ing. He had just crept out from one of the cheap lodging- 
houses, and he looked as if he had come out of the pit of hell. I 
said : "The devil works you pretty hard now, doesn't he?" He 
said, " That's so ! " I pity the man who is led captive by Satan. 



SATAN A HARD MASTER. 



389 



For many years I had been trying to get a man out of 
prison, and at last one New Year's Day the President granted 
our request. I cannot tell you the happiness I felt when I 
heard of the joy that came to that father and husband when he 
returned to the bosom of his family. Did it make that man 
gloomy to get his liberty? Take the man who is serving 
Satan faithfully, and then take one who is serving Jesus Christ, 
and has served Him for the last fifteen or twenty years, and let 
the two stand side by side. Then let them speak. Wouldn't 
their faces tell the story? If a man should say he had served 
Satan for forty years, and found him a good master, there is 
not a man that would believe him, not one. Let the man who 
has been in sweet fellowship with Christ for forty years tell of 
the joy he has found in His service, wouldn't his countenance 
prove the truth of what he said ? 

Instead of taking two men I will take two women ; for when 
a woman falls she falls lower than man. Why? Because God 
lifted her above men. When God created woman she was 
His highest workmanship. Now take a woman who has 
fallen the lowest, and let her stand here to-night, and then let 
the most saintly of women stand beside her. W^ould they need 
to speak, to testify that the devil is a hard master, and the Lord 
is a good master. ? 

Then, there is another very common excuse : " I am too 
wicked to come." A man might as well say, " I am too sick 
to have the doctor ; " but because he is sick he needs the doctor. 
Another man might say, " I am too hungry to eat ; " and a 
thirsty man might say, " I am too thirsty to drink." It is be- 
cause he is hungry that he needs food ; it is because he is thirsty 
that he needs water. 

During the Civil War I was one of the delegates appointed 
by the Christian Commission to assist the doctors, and our 
instructions were to care for the worst cases first. If a man 
was slightly wounded we passed him by ; but if a man was 
seriously wounded we helped him first. And so I believe it 
is on the battlefield of life, — the man furthest away from God 
24 



390 



THE COMMON PEOPLE. 



needs help the most. Let no one believe that he is " too 
wicked " or " too bad " to come to Christ. If you can prove 
that you are a sinner I can prove that you have a Saviour. 
Christ came to call sinners. Suppose the prodigal said, " When 
I am better off I will go to my father." No, it was his poverty 
and rags that brought him to him. And so it is our need that 
brings us, or ought to bring us, to Him. The instruction was, 
" Go out into the highways and the hedges and compel them 
to come in." Make the halt and the blind and the outcast 
come. I once heard a man say : 

" There are hardly any ' cultured ' people at Mr. Moody's 
meetings. His audiences are mostly made up of the common 
people." 

" Thank you for the compliment," I said. " My Master 
ministered to the ' common people,' and when a man gets above 
the common people he isn't worth much." 

What we want to remember is that Jesus Christ is the friend 
of the common people, like you and me, a true friend of sinners. 
If the Lord does not complain about your fitness or appear- 
ance, you shouldn't look to see if you have on the right kind 
of clothes. I used to notice, during the Civil War, when en- 
listing was going on, that sometimes a man would enlist with 
a nice silk hat on, patent leather boots, kid gloves, and a fine 
suit of clothes ; and perhaps the next man who came would 
be a hodcarrier, dressed in the poorest and cheapest kind of 
clothes. Both alike had to strip and put on the regimental 
uniform. So when you come and say you are not fit, haven't 
got good clothes, remember that He will furnish you with the 
uniform of heaven. 

I once heard of an artist who wanted to get a model to pose 
for a painting of the prodigal son. He went into almshouses 
and prisons, but he couldn't get one. Going through the 
streets one day he met a poor, wretched man, a beggar, and he 
asked him if he would pose for the picture. A bargain was 
made, and the artist gave him his address. The time for the 
appointment arrived, and the beggar duly appeared and said : 



COME AS YOU ARE. 



391 



" I have come to keep that appointment I made with you." 

" An appointment with me? " replied the artist; " you are 
mistaken ; I have an appointment with a beggar to-day." 

" Well," said the man, " I am that beggar, but I thought 
I would put on a new suit of clothes before I came to see you." 

" I don't want you," was the artist's reply, " I want a 
beggar." 

And so a great many people come to God with their self- 
righteousness, instead of coming in their rags and just as they 
are. 

Some one has said, " It is only the ragged sinners that open 
God's wardrobe." If you want to get a pair of shoes from a 
passer-by you would go barefooted, wouldn't you? I remem- 
ber a boy to whom I once gave a pair of boots, and I found him 
shortly after with bare feet again. I asked him what he had 
done with the boots I had given him, and he replied that he 
had put them on, but he found that when he was dressed up it 
spoiled his business ; no one would give him anything. By 
keeping his feet bare he got as many as five pairs of boots a 
day. So if you want to come to God, don't dress yourself up. 
It is the sinner as he is that God wants to save. Don't let 
any man say he is " too bad." It is the " bad " people we want. 
Jesus Christ can put His arm down deep into the pit and bring 
these bad ones out. How do I know? Because I have seen 
Him do it. No agnostic or infidel can knock me off that 
foundation. 

I remember a sailor who led a wild, reckless life. When his 
mother was alive she used to pray for him, and perhaps his 
memory of her sometimes made him stop and think. Once 
when at sea a desire to lead a better life came over him, and 
when he got on shore he thought he would join the Free 
Masons. He made application, but, upon investigation, his 
character proved to be only that of a drunken sailor, and he 
was black-balled. He next thought of joining the Odd Fel- 
lows, but his application met with the same fate. While walk- 
ing up Fulton Street, New York, one day, a little tract was 



392 



RINGING TESTIMONIES. 



given him — an invitation to the prayer-meeting. He came, and 
Christ received him. I remember his getting up in the meet- 
ing and telling how the Free Masons had black-balled him, 
how the Odd Fellows had' black-balled him, and how Christ 
had received him as he was. A great many orders and socie- 
ties will not receive you, but I tell you He will receive you, 
vile as you are — He, the Saviour of sinners — He, the Re- 
deemer of the lost world — He bids you come just as you are. 

I was once preaching in the large Opera House in Knox- 
ville, Tennessee, and a gentleman arose in the meeting, which 
was composed mostly of men, and said : 

" Mr. Moody, I want to say publicly that I will accept Jesus 
right here to-night." 

I like to have a meeting interrupted in that way, and I said : 

" Is there any one else? " 

Another gentleman stood up and said : 

" Yes, sir. I accept Jesus to-night." 

" Any one else? " I said. 

And a young man about twenty-one arose ; he had a hand- 
some face, a clear, ringing voice, and was the picture of health. 
He said : 

" Mr. Moody, I accept Jesus Christ here to-night." 

That was on Thursday night. From Knoxville I went 
down to Chattanooga, and preached there the next Sunday 
night, and after the services a gentleman came up and said : 

" Do you remember that young man who spoke out in the 
meeting last Thursday night? " 

" Yes, certainly," I said. 

" Well," he replied, " we all thought he was in perfect 
health, but he died last night." 

I believe I shall meet first and last many who have settled 
this important question in my meetings. Speak out and say, 
" I will." 

Another very popular excuse is this : " I do not want to 
become a Christian because there are so many hypocrites in 
the church." I will not contradict that statement, but I will 



HYPOCRISY IN ALL PLACES. 



393 



say, if you don't become Christians until all the hypocrites 
are dead you had better give up all hope. The wheat and 
tares will grow together until the general harvest. There are 
people who have an idea that a man must join a church to be- 
come a hypocrite. Now, if a man is living an impure life and 
passes himself off as a pure man, when he is not, isn't he a 
hypocrite? If a man slinks into a saloon and takes a drink 
" on the sly," isn't he a hypocrite ? If a man is dishonest in 
business, and cheats his customers every time he gets a chance, 
isn't he a hypocrite? 

Now, I want to make sure of this statement. You who do 
not want to go to church because there are so many hypo- 
crites, why not use the same argument about your business? 
Why not abandon your business because there are hypocrites 
in it? Is there any profession in which there are no hypo- 
crites? Why don't doctors say: "I'll not practice because 
there are so many quacks among the doctors." Are there not 
" shysters " among lawyers? I think you will find some 
hypocrites among the lawyers if you put on the same spectacles 
that you use to look at church-members. Are there no hypo- 
crites among the grocerymen? No adulterating goods and 
passing them off for pure articles? No short weights and 
short measures ? No manufacturer who puts a foreign label on 
goods made at home ? What political party do you belong to ? 
The Democratic party? Are there no hypocrites among the 
Democrats ? What are you, — a Republican ? Are there no 
hypocrites among the Republicans? You say you are Pro- 
hibitionist. Can't you find hypocrites among them ? Are you 
an Odd Fellow? Are there no hypocrites among the Odd 
Fellows? None among the Free Masons? You won't go to 
church " because there are so many hypocrites there." Why 
not get out of your societies and clubs? Are there not a lot 
of men who stay there until midnight or until the morning, 
go home half-drunk, and yet pose as honorable citizens ? 

One man says, " Well, I know a man, a member of a church, 
and he cheated me out of fortv dollars." 



394 MORE FLIMSY PROPHETS. 

This excuse has been his " stock in trade " for the last ten 
years. Speak to him of the kingdom of God, and he says, 
" A church member cheated me out of forty dollars." Be- 
cause a man has cheated you out of money, will you let him 
cheat you out of Heaven? 

Another man says : " I'll tell you the reason why I don't 
come to Christ now, there's too much excitement. I don't be- 
lieve in this sensational preaching. I never did. I want to be 
converted in regular order." 

Well, my friend, I don't care where or how you are con- 
verted so long as you are converted. Hunt up a church where 
there isn't any excitement. And if you can't find a church, 
there's a graveyard. Go to a graveyard and be converted. 
My friends, do you not see the " lie," the " sham " in this ex- 
cuse? There is more excitement at a race than in all the 
churches in six months. Men get so excited in the whiskey 
shops that they knock one another down ; and yet when one 
gets a breath from God in the churches, and tries to lift men 
up and save them, the people cry, " undue excitement ; " 
" fanaticism ; " " this will do more harm than good ! " 

Too much excitement ! Would to God there were a hun- 
dred times more. I pity a man that has knowledge, and has 
no fire back of it. I would rather have zeal without knowledge 
than knowledge without zeal. I pity men who have knowledge 
like Socrates, but wouldn't get a city or the world on fire. If 
you haven't a desire to help somebody else, don't throw stones 
at other people, and say they are " too zealous." If you see 
a man walking in his sleep on a precipitous mountain-side, 
wouldn't you wake him up and warn and try to help him? 

Another man says, " I have intellectual difficulties." 

When I was in Scotland I got hold of a Scotchman strug- 
gling with unbelief, and I asked him what was his trouble, and 
he said : 

" I can't believe." 

"Whom?" I said. 

" I can't believe," he replied. 



NO GROUND FOR UNBELIEF. 



395 



Whom ? " I said again. 



" You don't understand my case," he said. " I tell you I 
can't believe. I have intellectual difficulties." 

He began to smile, and was embarrassed, and said again : 

" I tell you I can't believe." 

" Can't believe whom ? " I said. 

" I can't believe myself," he said. 

" Thank God," I said. " I am glad you've got so far along." 
A man has gone a good ways toward Calvary when he cannot 
believe himself. 

When a man tells me that he can't believe the Bible, I 
would like to have him put his hand on a single promise that 
God has not kept. The devil and man for six thousand years 
have been trying to break God's Word. Until you can prove 
God a liar you have no ground for your unbelief. I don't be- 
lieve a man has an inch of ground to stand on when he says he 
can't believe God. " The heart is deceitful above all things, 
and desperately wicked," but the God of that Book has never 
deceived any one. 

Then there is another excuse : " I am afraid I won't hold 
out." Oh, friend, if you had to depend on yourself you could 
not hold out. The Lord undertakes to do that for you. I've 
seen men who started years before I did, fifty or sixty years 
ago, and He has kept them all these years. What God has 
been doing all these centuries, can He not continue to do? 
If Satan comes along and says, " You won't hold out," tell him 
he is a liar. 

Here is another excuse. Many say they would like to be- 
come Christians, but they " don't feel like it." Suppose a 
friend should invite me to dinner, and I should say, " I don't 
feel like it." He would probably say : 

" Mr. Moody, are you sick ? " 

" No. I never felt better in my life." 

" You don't want to come? " 

" Oh, yes. There's not a man in the world that I would 
like to take dinner with more than you." 



396 TWO EXCUSES NOT OFTEN GIVEN. 

" Don't you think I want you? " 

" Oh, yes. I know you want me." 

" Well, what do you mean? " 

" Well, I believe a man has got to have a certain kind of 
feeling, and I haven't got it. If I can work it up perhaps 
to-morrow I'll come around." 

Now, God invites me to a feast. Let " feelings " go to the 
four winds. The question is : Do you want to come. If you 
do, you have feeling enough. 

There are two excuses that men do not often give. They 
keep more souls out of Heaven than any other two excuses. 
The first is a lack of moral courage. There's a wife who would 
like to become a Christian but dare not tell her husband. She 
is going to miss Heaven because she has not moral courage. 
May God give her courage ! Act up to your convictions. If 
the world wants to sneer, let it sneer. I have been laughed at 
more or less for over forty years, but it is like the dust lighting 
on my face, — I can brush it away. Infidels may mock me. 
What do I care. They will soon perish, and their thoughts 
will perish with them. Men who ridiculed me over forty years 
ago when I came out for Christ have died long ago. When 
you see a man laughing at another because he turns his back 
upon sin and his old life, are you going to let that keep you 
from acting up to your convictions? Sometimes I get on a 
train of cars, and some one in my hearing begins to sneer at 
Christianity, and then I stand up for Christ. I don't know 
how a man can be laughed out of a principle. Many a man has 
gone down to a drunkard's grave because he didn't have 
courage to say " No " at the right Lime. He had some con- 
science left and wanted to refuse, but he couldn't muster up 
the needed courage. 

The other excuse is secret and besetting sin. There are 
men living in secret sins who howl against religious meetings, 
and say bitter things against the preacher. But the trouble 
is not with the preacher, nor with the doctrine he preaches. 
Such scoffers know they are not fit for Heaven. If a man isn't 



THE TEST OF ETERNAL TRUTH. 397 

fit for pure society down here, where is he going to when he 
dies? When men are willing to turn from their sins, they will 
have no trouble with the preacher or with his doctrine. If you 
are living in sin, make up your mind that you will break away 
from it. 

If your excuse is a good one take it up to the bar of God. 
But if your excuse will not stand the test of eternal truth take 
the advice of a friend, give it up. 

I beg of you, do not make light of this invitation to the 
feast. Would to God I might say something to bring you to it, 
God wants you there. 

I can imagine some one saying, " Thank God, I haven't got 
so low down that I would make light of religious things. My 
mother was a godly woman, and her example has followed me, 
and I have never made a jest of religious things." But if you 
reject this invitation, and do not repent, is not that making 
light of religious things? 

I had been preaching in Glasgow several weeks, and on the 
last night I pleaded with those people as I had never pleaded 
there before. It is a very solemn thing to stand before a vast 
audience for the last time and think you may never have an- 
other chance to ask them to come to Christ. I told them I 
would not have another opportunity, and urged them to ac- 
cept, and I asked them to meet me at that marriage supper. 
After the sermon a young lady came into the inquiry-room 
and said : " Mr. Moody, I want to become a Christian." I 
asked a young Christian to talk to her; and when she went 
home that night she said, " Mother, I have accepted the invita- 
tion to be present at the marriage supper of the Lamb." Her 
mother and father laid awake that night talking about the sal- 
vation of their daughter. That was Friday night, and the next 
day (Saturday) she was taken ill, and a few days after I received 
this letter : 

"Mr. Moody — Dear Sir: It is now my painful duty to inform 
you that the dear girl concerning whom I wrote to you on Monday, 
has been taken away from us by death. Her departure, however, has 



398 AN AFFECTING LETTER. 

been signally softened to us, for she told us yesterday she was ' going 
home to be with Jesus; ' and after giving messages to many, told us 
to let Mr. Moody and Mr. Sankey know that she died a happy 
Christian. 

" My dear sir, let us have your prayer that consolation and needed 
resignation and strength may be continued to us, and that our two dear 
remaining little ones may be kept in health if the Lord wills. I re- 
peated to her a line of the hymn, 

' In the Christian's home in glory, 
Tnere remains a land of rest,' 
when she took it up at once, and tried to sing, 

' Where the Saviour's gone before me, 
To fulfill my soul's request.' 
" This was the last conscious thing she said. I should say that my 
dear girl also expressed a wish that the lady she conversed with on 
Friday evening should also know that she died a happy Christian." 

When I heard this I said to Mr. Sankey, " If we do nothing 
else we have been paid for coming across the Atlantic. There 
is one soul saved, whom we shall meet on the resurrection 
morning." 



CHAPTER XIX. 

GOOD NEWS — GLAD TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY. 

Reading a Death Warrant — People Who are Glum and Melancholy — 
Entering Richmond with Gen. Grant — A Thrilling Incident of 
the Civil War — Two Men to be Selected for Immediate Exe- 
cution — Drawing the Names — A Startling Message that came 
to Richmond — Liberating Forty Million Serfs — A Disappointed 
Preacher — An Empty Theater — "Herrings for Nothing!" — 
Incredulous People — Paying People's Debts — The Men Who 
Arrived Too Late — Anecdote of Mr. Spurgeon — The Postman's 
Knock — Farewell to the Little Emigrants — Anecdote of Chaplain 
Trumbull — Moments of Awful Suspense — The Name that 
Thrilled His Soul — The Governor's Visit to a Condemned Con- 
vict — A Thrilling Incident — Wrapped in the English and 
American Flags — " Fire on those Flags If You Dare ! " 

THE first time I was in Europe an old white-haired man 
who used to do as much to spread the Gospel as any 
man I knew — he gave me at one time ten tons of 
tracts to flood Chicago — said one day that he wished to ask 
a question of me. 

" What is it? " I said. 
"What is the Gospel?" he asked. 
" The Gospel is coming to Christ," I replied. 
" No," he said, " the Gospel is God's spell, or good spell." 
"Well," I said, "isn't that coming to Christ?" 
" No," he answered, " that isn't the Gospel. You are 
preaching the Gospel, and you do not know what it is." 

I went to work to find out what Gospel meant, and found 
that it is " God's spell." — or good tidings — the joyful tidings 
of salvation. 

No better news has come from heaven to earth, or ever 
will come, than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For eighteen 

(399) 



400 A DEATH WARRANT OR A PARDON. 

hundred years men of God have gone up and down the earth 
proclaiming the glad tidings and telling the good news, and 
yet only a few will believe that it is good news. 

I have been preaching day and night more or less for forty 
years. Sometimes I look over an audience expecting to see 
their faces light up, and, I declare, they look as if I had brought 
them a death warrant. A great many have an idea that the 
Gospel is the most doleful message that ever came into this 
world; and when you begin to proclaim it, some men look as 
though they had just been requested to attend a funeral, or 
witness an execution, or go into some plague-infested hospital. 

I once heard two or three ladies talking about the Bible. 
One lady said to another: 

" I saw some of my friends reading the Bible, and they 
looked so glum and melancholy." Turning to me she said: 

" I don't think people should be melancholy when they read 
the Bible; do you, Mr. Moody?" 

" Well," I replied, " It depends upon the kind of people 
who read the Bible; if they are unsaved sinners they will." 

" But," she asked, " tell me why." 

" Because that book is the death warrant of an unsaved 
sinner; but if a man knows he is lost, that he is guilty and con- 
demned, and he comes to the Saviour, then the Bible is not a 
death warrant; it is a reprieve — it is a pardon — it is good 
news, glad tidings." 

Every man who is unsaved ought to be sad when he reads 
his own death warrant, and that is the reason why unsaved 
people don't like to read the Bible. 

During the Civil War it was my privilege to enter Rich- 
mond with General Grant's army. Now, just let us picture a 
scene on a beautiful day in spring. There are a thousand poor 
Union prisoners in Libby Prison. They have not heard what 
has been going on around Richmond ; they haven't even heard 
of Lee's surrender. I can imagine one of these prisoners say- 
ing, " Hark, boys ! hark ! I hear a band of music, and it 
sounds as if they were playing 



AGONIZING SUSPENSE. 

' The Star Spangled Banner ! long may it wave, 

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave ! ' " 



4OI 



By and by the sound comes nearer and still nearer. It is 
the Union army, — the boys in blue. Next, the doors of the 
prison are unlocked; they fly wide open and their comrades 
shout, " Boys, you're free ! " Wasn't that good news to them ? 

During that war many of our men were taken prisoners by 
the Southern army. These prisoners had been suffering in 
that prison for a long time, and were anxious to be released, 
and they waited day after day to hear the news that they were 
to be exchanged. One day word was brought to them that 
every man with the rank of captain was to be taken to the com- 
manding officer's headquarters. The prisoners thought that 
the captains were to be sent home. Then every colonel 
wished he were a captain. He would like to come down in 
the ranks; and every lieutenant wished he were higher up. 
They were all congratulating these captains, for they thought 
they were going back to their wives and mothers. They were 
taken to headquarters; every one of them expected to be 
paroled. But the prison officer said: 

" Men, I have painful news to tell you. I am ordered to 
select two of your number for immediate execution." 

The feeling that came over that company was terrible. 
The officers put the names of all the captains into a hat, and 
one of them put his hand into it and drew out the names of 
two men. He read the names he had drawn — they were 
Sayer and Flynn. The hair of one of these men turned gray 
during the next night. Our government heard what was 
going on, and they sent this word to Richmond: 

" If you take the lives of those men, we will take the life 
of the nephew of General Lee." 

All at once news came to the two doomed captains, " You 
are saved." Don't you think that was good news to them? 

Now, you know you are under sentence of death. We 
are all condemned to die! Yet there is liberty for every poor 
captive that wants it. 



402 THE DAY OF LIBERATION. 

Once when I was returning from Europe I met Governor 
Curtin on board the steamer, coming back from Russia. I 
was much interested in the account he gave of the Emperor 
having liberated forty million serfs. We thought President 
Lincoln had done a great thing when he liberated our slaves; 
but it was far surpassed by that act of the Emperor of Russia. 
He called his imperial council together to devise some way 
by which liberty could be given to these serfs. They con- 
sulted together for six long months; and at last, one night, 
they sent word to the Emperor that it would not be expedient 
or wise to free them. That night the Emperor went to the 
Greek Church to partake of the sacrament. The next morn- 
ing he ordered out his guards, and they guarded the palace, 
and planted their cannon around it. At midday a ukase was 
issued by the Emperor proclaiming freedom to forty million 
serfs. They were made free. That is the kind of proclama- 
tion I bring to you, and what you want to do is just to believe 
in its truth. 

Some years ago a man in Europe was converted, and after 
he had been a Christian a little while he got so full of the good 
tidings that he wanted to publish them and tell everybody all 
about it. He read in the papers that many of the factories in 
some of the nearby towns had closed, and he thought it would 
be a good time to go and tell the people of the good news he 
enjoyed. So he sent to one of the towns, hired a theater for 
one Sunday, and advertised that he was going to preach the 
Gospel. He expected to find the theater packed; but there 
wasn't a person there. He went on the stage, and there was 
not a soul to hear him. The keeper came to him, looked at 
him, and laughed. He thought it was a huge joke. The man 
didn't want to return home disappointed, so he thought he 
would go down to the shore and see if he couldn't get an audi- 
ence there. A good many people were walking up and down 
the beach, but no one would listen to him. By and by he saw 
a man walking along the beach, and he had on his head a 
basket of fish. He was crying: 



HERRINGS GIVEN AWAY. 405 

" Herrings, herrings, good fresh herrings, two for a 
penny!" 

" How much will you take for the lot? " the man asked. 

He counted the herrings and said he would take eight 
shillings, — about two dollars. 

" Well," said the man, " if you will cry ' Herrings for noth- 
ing! Good, fresh herrings for nothing!' I will pay you for 
them." He accepted, and he went on crying: 

"Herrings for nothing! Good fresh herrings for noth- 
ing." 

But he couldn't get rid of a herring. He walked the whole 
length of the street, crying " Herrings for nothing ! " but he 
finally stopped and said: 

" I didn't know there were so many fools in the world." 

The secret was, nobody believed him. Some were hungry 
and starving, but they didn't believe they could get those 
herrings for nothing. At last he saw a woman looking ear- 
nestly at him out of a window, and he said: 

" Madam, it is true; these herrings are given away." 

She came out of the house and he gave her a couple ot 
herrings. Others were watching, and in a few minutes they 
had carried them all away. 

Now the trouble was, they didn't believe, and that is the 
trouble in regard to our preaching. Men do not believe that 
you can get " something for nothing." You can get the best 
thing in the world for nothing. It is as free as the air we 
breathe ; it is " Good Tidings of Great Joy." 

Another man was converted in Europe some years ago, 
and he liked the Gospel so well he thought he, too, would go 
and publish it. So he started out and great crowds came to 
hear him out of curiosity. He wasn't much of a speaker, and 
the next night there were not many present, and the third 
night he didn't have a hearer. But he was anxious to pro- 
claim the Gospel, and so he got some great placards and posted 
them all over the town, announcing that if any man in that 
town was in debt, if he would come to his office between cer- 



406 



PAYING THE DEBT. 



tain hours on a certain day with proof of the indebtedness he 
would pay it. Well, of course the news spread all over the 
town, but nobody believed him. One man said to his 
neighbor: 

" John, do you believe this man will pay our debts? " 

" Oh, of course not; that offer is a great hoax." 

The day came, and instead of there being a great rush, no 
one came. 

About ten o'clock a man was walking up and down in 
front of the office; he looked this way and that to see if any- 
body was looking, and by and by he sneaked in and said: 

" I saw a notice that if any one would call here at a certain 
hour you would pay his debts. Is there any truth in it? " 

" Yes," said the man, " it is quite true. Did you bring 
around the necessary papers? " 

" Yes." 

After the man had paid the debt he said: 

" Sit down, I want to talk to you." And he kept him 
there until twelve o'clock. 

Before twelve o'clock had passed two more men came in 
and their debts were paid. At twelve o'clock he let them all 
out, when they found other men standing around the door, who 
said, sneeringly : 

" Well, you found he was willing to pay your debts, didn't 
you?" 

" Yes, it is quite true, he has paid them." 

" Oh, if that's so, we'll go in and get our debts paid, too." 
And they went in, but it was too late. 

Now, it is a great wonder that there isn't a rush of men 
into the kingdom of God to have their debts paid, when a 
man can be saved for nothing. To every one who is a bank- 
rupt sinner — and you never saw a sinner in the world who 
wasn't a bankrupt sinner — Christ comes and He says, " I will 
pay the debt." 

Mr. Spurgeon told me that he once went to his orphanage 
on a visit. He said that a great many of those orphans had 



BECAUSE THAT'S ME 



407 



uncles and aunts and cousins and sisters who brought them 
Christmas presents. During this visit a little boy came to 
him and said, " Mr. Spurgeon, will you let me talk to you a 
minute?" " Yes, my boy. What is it you want?" "Mr. 
Spurgeon, suppose your father and mother were dead, and 
you didn't have any cousins, or aunts, or uncles, or friends to 
give you pocket money, and give you presents, don't you 
think you would feel bad — because that's inc." Said Mr. 
Spurgeon, " the minute he said that, I put my hand right down 
into my pocket and took out the money." Because that's me! 
And so with the Gospel. We must say to those who have 
sinned, the Gospel is offered to them. 

I am sure there is not one, rich or poor, high or low, who 
does not like to hear glad tidings. In Ireland, at the house 
opposite the one where I was living, when a man came from 
the market with something that had been ordered he would 
ring the bell and stand waiting for five or six minutes before 
anyone would go to the door. Sometimes ladies and gentle- 
men would come and stand waiting for the door to be opened. 
But I always noticed that whenever the postman came and 
gave his double knock, three or four would rush to the door 
at once. Everybody is fond of good news — of glad tidings. 

I once went from London to Manchester to bid some 
friends good bye. When I arrived at the railway station I 
saw a group of boys around two little fellows who were going 
to America. Their coats were threadbare, with patches here 
and there carefully covering the holes. Some good mother, 
too poor to send them away in fine style, had tried to make 
them as neat and presentable as she could. The boys be- 
longed to a Sunday-school in London, and their schoolmates 
had come to bid them good bye. They shook hands and their 
Sunday-school teacher did the same, and all wished them God- 
speed. Then their minister came and took them by the hand. 

When they all had bade the boys good bye, a poor widow 
came up and put her arms around the companion of her son. 
Perhaps he had no mother, and she kissed him for her and 
25 



408 WAITING FOR THE MESSAGE. 

wished him good bye. Then she put her arms around the 
neck of the other boy, and he put his arms around her, and she 
began to weep. " Don't cry, mother," said the boy; " don't 
cry; I'll soon be in America, and I'll save money, and soon 
send for you to come out to me; and I'll have you with me: 
Don't cry." He stepped into the car and when the train was 
in motion he put his head out of the window and cried: 
"Farewell, mother;" and the mother's prayer went out: 
" God bless my boy; God bless my boy." 

Don't you think that when he sent the first letter to Eng- 
land that mother would run quickly to the door when the post- 
man came with it? How quickly she would break the seal. 
She wanted to hear good news. There is not one to whom a 
message of good news, of glad tidings, has not been sent — 
better news than was ever received by a mother from a son. 
It is a message of glad tidings from a loving Saviour — glad 
tidings of great joy. 

Suppose I should tell you that the angel Gabriel had come 
down from Heaven and commissioned me to say that just one 
man could be saved, and that he had given me the name. Ah, 
there would be intense excitement, and each one would say, 
" I hope it is my name. I hope the message has come that I 
may be saved." You would want to know the name, and you 
would like to have it your name. 

Rev. Henry Clay Trumbull once told me that when he was 
a chaplain in the army during the Civil War he was captured 
and taken to Libby Prison. There were nine hundred com- 
missioned officers in that prison while he was there. A little 
while before he was released he heard that his child was lying 
at the point of death. He could get no direct tidings from 
home, and he wondered whether his little one was dead or 
alive. One day the good news spread through the prison that 
one man was to be paroled. He said to himself, " I shall not 
be the fortunate one. There are Brigadier-Generals, and 
Colonels, and Lieutenant-Colonels here, men who outrank me. 
There's many a man in this prison who has more influence at 



GOOD NEWS FOR ALL. 



409 



Washington." The prison officer appeared, and Mr. Trum- 
bull said if every man had been stricken by death there couldn't 
have been greater silence. Only one man was to be paroled. 
Only one man was to be set free. Only one man was to go 
back to his wife and children, only one. And at last the prison 
officer cried out "HENRY CLAY TRUMBULL!" He 
said the name never sounded so sweet before. It thrilled his 
very soul. 

My friends, I have better news than that. I have not been 
commissioned to say that only one man can be saved to-night. 
Oh, no, I have got good news. " Whosoever will, let him take 
the water of life freely." There is salvation for every man. 

I want to tell you that Christ has made everything clear, 
right up to Heaven, if you will just take Him as your Lord, 
as your Bishop, your Prophet, your Priest, your King. You 
need not fear death. You need not fear the grave. He will 
deliver you from the power of sin if you will only let Him 
come into your heart and take up His abode there. 

There was a young man in a Pennsylvania prison whose 
death warrant had been signed. A great many had asked the 
Governor for a pardon for the young man, but he had refused. 
The Governor was a Christian, and he thought he would go 
to the prison and talk with the condemned man and tell him 
that God was merciful and would save his soul. He said to 
the sheriff, " I want you to take me to that young man's cell, 
but don't tell him who I am until I have left town." He was 
taken into the jail; the iron door opened and he passed into the 
young man's cell. He sat down on the iron bed and told the 
prisoner that, although he had been condemned to death by 
the law of Pennsylvania, there was a merciful God who could 
save him. He preached Christ, read a portion of the Bible, 
explained to him the way of life, and then he got down on his 
knees and prayed with him. 

Some days after, the sheriff was in the jail, and the con- 
demned man said to him: 

" Who was that man who talked and prayed with me? " 



4IO INTERCEDING FOR A PRISONER. 

" That was the Governor of Pennsylvania." 

The man turned deathly pale, and said: 

" Sheriff, do you mean to say that was Governor Bullock? " 

" Yes." 

" Oh, sheriff, why didn't you tell me? If I had known that 
was the Governor, I would have fallen at his feet and begged 
him to pardon me. Oh, why didn't you let me know ! If I 
had only known that, he would never have gone out of here 
without hearing my plea for pardon." 

My friends, there is one greater than the Governor, and, 
thank God, He has a pardon for <every soul. It is signed and 
sealed with His own blood. He wants to pardon every one 
of us. 

An English officer once told me the story of a young man 
who came to this country from England, became a naturalized 
citizen, and afterward went to Cuba, and was there in 1867 
when a war broke out. Finally he was arrested and taken be- 
fore the Military Court and condemned to be shot as a spy. 
The American consul heard of the case and called on the Eng- 
lish consul and laid the story before him, and they found that he 
was perfectly innocent. They went to the Spanish command- 
ing officer and told him the man was not guilty; but the 
Spanish officer said the law must take its course. 

There was no cable to Cuba then, and the consuls could 
not quickly communicate with their governments. The morn- 
ing came when the man was to be executed. The coffin was 
put into a cart, and the condemned man, sitting on his own 
coffin, was drawn through the streets of the city. A grave 
had been dug, and the coffin was placed beside it. The 
doomed man sat on the end of the coffin, the black cap was 
drawn over his eyes, and the Spanish officer was ready to give 
the order to the soldiers to fire, when the American consul and 
the English consul rode up. The Englishman sprang out of 
the carriage and took the British flag and wrapped it around 
the condemned man; at the same moment the American threw 
the Star Spangled Banner around him, and as he sat there 



UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN. 



411 



wrapped in the flags of two great nations the consuls turned 
to the Spanish officers and said, " Fire on those flags if you 
dare! " They dared not fire on them; there were two powerful 
nations behind those flags. My friends, if you get under the 
banner of Heaven, God will say to your enemies, " You put 
your hand upon My people and you touch Me; they are the 
apple of Mine eye." 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE STANDARD OF MT. SINAI. 

A Woman Who Worshiped Herself — The Man Who Never Sinned — 
Swearing " From the Mouth Out " — A Negro Preacher Who 
Declined to Preach a Sermon on Stealing — People Who 
" Squirm " — " My Boy Richard Thinks It's Wrong " — Sunday 
Newspapers — How Mr. Moody Kept Sunday When a Boy — 
Working Seven Days a W^eek — The Drunken Sailor Converted — 
" I am So Tired ! " — " That is My Washerwoman " — The Vale- 
dictorian's Mother — Coming to Commencement in Her Old 
Turned Dress — The Farmer's Son at College — "Get Away, 
Old Man; I Don't Know You" — Tempted to Drink — The 
Meanest Kind of Murder — " I Can't Go Into Court" — Story of 
the Opium Smuggler — The Cashier's Mistake — " How Far Is It 
To Heaven?" — An Arrow That Went to the Mark. 

OF ALL the agnostics, or infidels, or skeptics I have 
ever met, I have yet to find the first one who can find 
fault with God's law. " Thou shalt have no other 
p-ods before Me.'' If God created us, — and there must have 
been a creating power, — He certainly ought to have our ad- 
miration and our worship. We certainly ought not to worship 
a god made by our hands and by our own imagination. If God 
has created, then He should have the first place in our hearts. 
I believe that when we give God His place, and we take our 
place, then life begins in earnest, and we are in a position 
where God can smile on us, and shower upon us untold bless- 
ings. 

" Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image." I 
believe the devil is willing to let us worship the Bible, the 
saints, the angels, and the apostles if we do not worship the 
God of Heaven. We are to worship no image of God, but the 

God of the Bible. 

(412) 



KEEP YOURSELVES FROM IDOLS. 



413 



You need not go to China to find men worshiping idols. 
How many there are everywhere who bow down to the idols 
Business, Pleasure, Children, Wealth, Dress. How many 
have their minds continually on the question, " What shall I 
wear? " I was in a meeting once when a lady came in and 
took a seat near the front. I handed her a hymn book but 
she was so taken up with herself, looking at her dress, and 
admiring herself generally — you could see it in her eyes — 
that she had no thought of anything else. She worshiped 
herself. That was her god. You can make a god of yourself 
as well as of some image that men make with their hands. 

" Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in 
vain." Men frequently have more respect for their family 
than for the God of Heaven. I know a great many men who 
would not swear before their children, their wives, or mothers, 
but they swear like pirates when they get out of their sight. 
It shows that they have more respect for their family than for 
God. A man can't show his contempt for God more than by 
swearing, cursing, and blaspheming. During the Civil War 
you could hear men cursing and swearing on every side; but 
when a mother came to look after her wounded son, or some 
saintly woman of the Christian Commission or the Sanitary 
Commission came through that camp, — and they were like 
angels passing by — the men would not swear; they had more 
respect for the wife, the sister, or nurse, than for the God of 
Heaven. 

I met a man once who told me he had never sinned. He 
said if he knew of any wrong he had done he would repent. I 
said : 

" Did you ever get angry?" 

" Oh, yes, but righteous indignation is all right." 

" Did you ever swear?" 

" Well," said he, " I wish you wouldn't ask me that. Oh, 
I don't mean anything by that. I only swear from the mouth 
out." 

God says He will not hold a man guiltless that taketh His 



414 THE NEGRO PREACHER'S OBJECTION. 

name in vain, and when a man swears and thinks it is not a 
sin he is deluded indeed. No blasphemer shall inherit the 
kingdom of God. Do you believe a man cursing that holy 
name will have a desire to see God face to face? But some 
say, " I have tried to stop and cannot do it. When I get ex- 
cited, I swear." I once met a man in the South and I labored 
with him because he swore. He stuck to it, and he was a pro- 
fessed Christian, too. Now, I believe if the Holy Ghost does 
not take the " swear " out of us our Christianity does not 
amount to much. It is hard work to make me believe a man 
who swears is a true child of God. 

I heard of a negro during slavery times who was preach- 
ing with a great deal of power. His master heard of it and 
sent for him. 

" Sambo," he said, " I am told that you are preaching to 
the negroes with a great deal of power." 

: ' Yes, Massa, the Lord helps me right smart sometimes." 

" Now, I want you to take time enough to prepare a good 
sermon, and preach against stealing, because there's a great 
deal of that going on around the plantation. Study up, and 
preach a powerful sermon against stealing." 

Sambo's countenance fell at once. His master said: 

" What's the matter? What makes you look so downcast 
about it? " 

" Well, Massa," Sambo replied, " I don't like to preach on 
that subject, 'cause it always throws a kind of coldness over 
the meeting." 

I notice it sometimes throws a coldness over the meetings 
when we preach the Ten Commandments. 

My wife was once teaching our youngest boy his Sunday- 
school lesson. The lessons had been for a few Sundays on 
those kings that reigned in Israel after Solomon, and they 
had got as far as Omri and Ahab. The kings grew worse and 
worse right along down, and Ahab was the worst of the lot. 
When they came to Ahab, my wife said, " Now, Paul, notice 
that this King Omri was very bad, and his son was worse than 



A BOY'S EXAMPLE. 



415 



his father; they kept growing worse. Now, perhaps they be- 
gan by being disobedient ; " and she began to apply the truth 
to him. The little fellow squirmed in his chair a little while 
and then said, " Mother, I think you are getting a good ways 
from the lesson.'' That is just the way with all of us; when 
the truth is forced upon us how we squirm. 

" Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." I think 
that is very clear, and I believe that Law is as binding and as 
much in force to-day as when it was first uttered at Sinai. 
When I was in Philadelphia, Richard Newton of the Episcopal 
church told me his experience. He belonged to a Bible class, 
and the teacher was trying to lead him to Christ. His father 
kept his grocery store open on Sundays, and he worked with 
him. By and by he made up his mind to come to Christ. 
After he became a Christian he told his father he was willing 
to work until midnight Saturday night, but he would not work 
on Sunday. His father said, "Very well, young man; if you 
are too pious to obey your father, you can get out." The 
next Sunday was the hardest day of his life. He couldn't bear 
the thought of going away from home. Monday morning he 
was lying in his bed wondering where he would go after break- 
fast, when his father came to the door and rapped, and said, 
" Richard, it is time to open the store." He said he never 
jumped out of bed and dressed himself so quickly before in his 
life. He worked all the week and did everything he could, 
and nothing was said about his going away. On Saturday he 
heard his father say to his customers, " My son Richard thinks 
it is wrong to keep the store open on Sunday, and you must 
buy all your goods to-day." The result was, that not only his 
father, but his brothers, were converted; all won to Jesus 
Christ just because he was willing to take his stand. 

People have changed the Holy day into a holiday and a 
day of recreation. Now for a fact: If the Sabbath goes, the 
church goes. If we give up the Sabbath, we must give up the 
church. If the church goes, the home goes. That is the next 
thing. Destroy the church and you destroy the home. Keep 



416 



CHILDREN AT CHURCH. 



that in mind. I don't believe that life or society would be safe, 
that property would be safe, even in the heart of a city, if it was 
not for the church. 

Now I come to the Sunday newspaper. Do you believe 
that I can glorify God by reading a paper that goes out with 
page after page of " fun," that has page after page of " society 
news," columns of " suicides and murders," and all the " adul- 
tery " cases they can rake up in the whole country? And if 
a minister has gone wrong in all Christendom, they keep the 
tid-bit for Sunday reading. Well, if you take such papers into 
your home, and your children acquire a taste for that kind of 
reading, do you expect that they are going to church Sunday 
morning if they can get out of it? 

I will tell you something more. I have traveled a good 
deal and I suppose I have been in the churches of this country 
as much as any man; and I want to say that you can go from 
Maine to California and as a general thing you will see very 
few children in the churches. There are exceptions, but as a 
general thing the children are not there. I think it is a beauti- 
ful sight to see a father and a mother coming in with seven or 
eight children behind them. I get hundreds of letters saying, 
" Mr. Moody, ask the people to pray for my drunken son." 
It seems to me the time to begin is when they are children. 
I think fathers and mothers ought to bring their children to 
church with them. If the child goes to sleep, wake him up. 
You say: 

" They don't understand the sermon." 

What if they don't! 

" But their feet don't touch the floor, and they get tired." 

It will do them good. My mother started me off to 
Sunday-school, and kept me going, and it was not to one ser- 
vice only, but to three. I went to church and heard the 
sermon; went to the graveyard where my father was 
buried and ate a little lunch that I took in my pocket; -went 
back to Sunday-school, and after Sunday-school went to 
church again; and did it all up for the whole week. I was glad 



A LAND WITHOUT A SABBATH. 



417 



when it was all over, and when I got to Boston I declared that 
I would stop going to church; but I could not. When Sun- 
day came I was bound to go. And when I stood at the grave 
of my mother, one thing that I thanked God for was that she 
made me go. If I had come to the city at eighteen years of 
age, without that training, I think I should have gone down 
to ruin. 

You say that Sunday newspapers are prepared beforehand. 
Now, if the papers were anxious not to work on Sunday, they 
could get nearly everything ready on Saturday for the Monday 
paper. You know I haven't been around this world with my 
eyes shut. I know it can be done. They say there is no work 
done on these papers on Sunday. But see how many trains 
are running for them, and how many boys are selling them. 
If you have a conscience, the next time you buy a Sunday 
paper I hope it will rise and smite you. We can get on with- 
out Sunday papers. You don't find in them wholesome Sun- 
day food for soul and body. 

People call me a " Puritan." I like that. I would rather 
stand alone than go with the multitude if they are going to 
ruin. I would rather be in the minority with God than in the 
majority without Him. France gave up the Sabbath. How 
much have they made by it? In Paris I found skilled me- 
chanics, carpenters, bricklayers, all kinds of mechanics, work- 
ing for a dollar and a quarter a day. The capitalists and 
monopolists make them work seven days in the week, and if 
they won't they are ground down. The Sabbath is a boon to 
every workingman. I don't believe in strikes; I have no sym- 
pathy with strikes; but I confess I should be inclined to go in 
and fight if workingmen were compelled to do unnecessary 
work on the Sabbath. If you break down the Law of God it 
will bring ruin. It is the most astonishing thing that people 
don't see it. Take the criminals and you will find that almost 
every one of them began his career of crime by breaking the 
Sabbath. 

There are no people whose religious influence is felt more 



41 8 THE BEST TIME IS NOW. 

than the Scotch. I don't believe that any other four millions in 
any part of the world have turned out so many strong men as 
Scotland. Reverence for the Sabbath is deep-rooted there. 
When I went to Glasgow they put up a building in the East 
End and I used to stay at the West End, three or four miles 
away. They sent word to me that they thought I would do 
as much good to foot it on Sunday as to drive a cab four miles. 
They put me in that position, and I had great respect for them. 

I used to think that I could work seven days in a week, and 
I was an older man at thirty than at sixty-two. I used to work 
so hard that the " spring " went out of me ; but when I saw that 
I was violating God's law I repented and turned around. 
You can't get anything out of me on Saturday. I take the 
whole day of Saturday to rest, and on Sunday I am as fierce to 
get at an audience as I was at twenty. I read a paragraph in a 
newspaper the other day, that ministers are not wanted after 
they are fifty ; that is the dead line. I don't believe ministers 
are worth much until they get to be fifty. People say the best 
is behind, that our heyday is the past. It is not so. I am 
growing young. I am only sixty-two. In a paper down in 
Texas, not long ago, an article was headed : " Old Moody 
here." I was shocked. Why, I never felt so young in all my 
life as I do now. What does the Bible say? " With long life 
will I satisfy him, and shew him My salvation." There is no 
death to a true believer. My heyday is ahead of me. I pity 
those people who go around with their heads down. I don't 
know why a man should be cut off at forty or fifty unless he 
violates God's law. 

You hear about ministers " overworking." Well, they do 
when they work seven days in the week. I believe that the 
professional man who works hardest with his brains is the 
pastor. Look at the sick he has to visit; at the funerals he has 
to attend. I would rather preach twelve sermons than attend 
one funeral. If he has a heart in him a funeral saps his life. 
Two sermons a week, and then the pastoral calls. His work 
is never done. I am sorrv that most of them work seven davs 



RESTING ON THE SABBATH. ^jq 

in the week; that is where they make a mistake. Give the 
body a rest. 

Does any one need it any more than a man engaged in 
Christian work? Let the brains have rest and you can keep 
right along twelve months in the year. I give my horses a 
rest. If they have to work Sunday they get a rest on Monday. 
We have a good many horses connected with the Northfield 
farm ; our Boys' School is four miles from the church, and 
the teachers have to ride. It was a problem to be decided 
how they could be conveyed to church ; but I came to the 
conclusion that the Lord would make it up to us if we let some 
of our horses rest one day; and the horse that works Sunday 
gets his rest on Saturday or Monday. The horses are fat, and 
fresh, and strong. Apply the Golden Rule to the horse and 
the man that works for you. If you do they will speak well of 
you and testify for you. 

" Honor thy father and thy mother." Do you think that 
a young man who spends his nights in whiskey shops; or a 
young man who spends his nights playing billiards, where 
there is a bar, to. see who shall pay for the drinks; or a young 
man that goes to a brothel, is an honor to his father and 
mother? If a man is living a miserable, selfish life and never 
gives an evening to his parents, but is off to some club or 
fashionable resort, is he honoring them? NO. 

I have never known a young man to prosper who spoke 
contemptuously of his parents. There was once a young man 
whom I thought a good deal of, who once belonged to the 
Sunday-school I had in Chicago. He was as fine a looking 
young man as I ever saw. His father was a confirmed 
drunkard, and his mother took in washing in order that her 
children might have an education. He was a young man of 
great promise, and when he was in the High School he ranked 
as high as any pupil there. I had great hopes of that family. 
But one day the mother stood out in front of her humble home 
with her washing clothes on, talking with this son. He saw 
a young man coming up who attended the High School, and 



4 20 DENYING HIS MOTHER. 

he left his mother and went forward to meet him. And the 
other boy said : 

"Who is that woman you were talking with?" 
" Oh," he said, " that's my washerwoman." 
He was ashamed to have his companion know it was his 
mother. When I heard of it my heart sank within me. I said, 
" That young fellow isn't what I thought he was." I kept my 
eye upon him. He made an utter wreck of life. I lost hope 
for him from the hour he denied his mother. 

Dr. John Hall once told of a boy who had been sent by 
his mother off to school, and when the time came for him to 
graduate he wrote home that he wanted his timid, old, 
widowed mother to be there on graduation day. She wrote 
back she could not come; she hadn't a new dress, and had 
turned the skirt of her old one once and she couldn't turn it 
again. The boy said he could not graduate without her; she 
must come. He persuaded her to come. She wasn't dressed 
very well. When the people had assembled it was discovered 
that the best seat in the hall was reserved for somebody. Soon 
that young man came proudly down the broad aisle with his 
aged, widowed mother leaning on his arm, and he escorted her 
to that seat. She did not know that he had carried everything 
before him, that he was Valedictorian of his class, and the most 
popular man in the whole school. When he won the prize 
and the medal was placed upon his breast, he slipped down 
and put it on his mother, and kissed her, and said, " I should 
never have had it but for you." 

There was nothing in President Garfield's life that touched 
me so much as when, the moment after his inauguration, he 
turned and kissed his aged mother. I say that man is a 
miserable, contemptible wretch who speaks sneeringly of his 
parents. A man ashamed of his old mother! — God forgive 
him. If you have a mother, treat her kindly. She is the best 
friend you have. If she is alive, make her last days as sweet as 
you can. When she is gone you will realize that about half 
the world is gone. 



AN UNGRATEFUL SON. 



421 



A poor farmer was toiling hard to keep his son at school. 
One day he went up to the city in his old " butternut " clothes 
to sell a load of wood. The boy was about finishing his course 
and the father was trying hard to raise money to pay the 
bills. As he was going up the street he came suddenly upon 
his son, who was with some other young men, dressed in the 
height of fashion. The father eagerly rushed up to him and 
said: 

" I am so glad to see you, my boy." 

But the son rudely pushed him aside, and said: 

" Get away, old man, I don't know you." 

The father went home heart-broken — his son was 
ashamed of him. God pity a young man who would treat his 
father in that way! 

When I see drinking saloons full of young men I think of 
the white-haired mother back in the country somewhere; I 
think of the father whose head is bowed with grief and shame. 
You who live in the city ought to do all you can to save these 
young men. Give them a kind word, a helping hand. I can't 
tell you how lonely I felt when I first came to the city. No 
Young Men's Christian Association or Public Library that I 
knew of. I didn't know where to go. The stores were closed 
at night, and I was out on the streets, and my feet well-nigh 
slipped. It is a privilege to live in some of these great cities, 
to help those who need help. Many a young man who has 
become a curse to his parents and his friends might have been 
a beacon light pointing to the City whose foundation is the 
God of Heaven. 

I remember the first time a young man asked me to drink. 
I said " No." I told him I had promised my mother that I 
would never drink. He said, " You are tied to your mother's 
apron strings." I turned round and gave him a blow that al- 
most knocked him down. I am now over sixty years old, and I 
am not ashamed to say that I thank God I obeyed my mother. 
She had seven sons, and not one of us ever drank. The last 
influence a man forgets is the teaching of his mother. Go to 



422 



THE WORST OF MURDERERS. 



prison cells — to the men confined there for life; they can't 
forget the training and teaching of father and mother. It 
follows them to the last. 

" Thou shalt not kill." Hate is a murderer. I used to 
think that to the congregations I addressed it would be out 
of place to talk about murder. If I get angry with a man and 
wish him dead and would like to hear that he was dead, that 
is murder. I think the meanest murderer is the young man 
who will kill his own father and mother, and do it by inches ; 
go home night after night drunk, and when the mother remon- 
strates, have him curse her, and tell his father to " mind his 
own business"; he "will drink as much as he pleases," and 
" come home when he gets ready." That is the meanest kind 
of a murderer. That man who murders me for my money is 
a prince to him. How many young men are murdering their 
parents? How many husbands are murdering their wives by 
their impure lives, by going off into all kinds of sin and bring- 
ing ruin upon their children; and the mother sees it, and her 
heart breaks, and she sinks under it and goes to the grave. 
Isn't that murder? When I see a young man breaking his 
mother's heart it breaks my heart. 

Once when I was preaching in New York a boy was 
brought into court who had threatened the life of his mother, 
and she had handed him over to the police. The next morn- 
ing she said, " I can't go into court," and she fell dead in the 
hall. Didn't that boy murder his mother? Of course he did. 

" Thou shalt not commit adultery." I would like to pass 
over this commandment and not touch upon it. But I believe 
that adultery is coming in upon us like a flood, and I believe 
that we have got to cry aloud and spare not. Now, there are 
very stringent laws against murder and stealing; and if I 
should be found guilty of stealing a hundred dollars I would 
be behind prison bars before the sun went down to-night ; and 
if I should deliberately push some one under an electric car, 
and he should lose his life, I would be arrested, tried for mur- 
der, and would probably be hanged. But a young man may 



A DARK SIN. 423 

make fair promises of marriage and ruin a woman's soul and 
body, and yet hold his head high in society. In the sight of 
God isn't his sin darker and deeper than stealing, or even 
murder? And yet, how many men make light of it. Think of 
the untold wretchedness and agony and woe caused by that 
cursed sin. I firmly believe that the most infernal sin that the 
sun shines on to-day in America is the way a so-called 
" fallen " woman is treated. She has been wronged, ostra- 
cised from society, cast out and dragged down by the hounds 
of hell; and the man that wronged her holds his head high and 
walks down the aisles of the church. He is not ostracised. 
That is a sin that God will punish some day. Do you think 
the adulterer is going to get clear? Do you think God isn't 
going to bring him to judgment? I have not the shadow of a 
doubt. The Bible shows that no adulterer can inherit the 
kingdom of God. For a man or woman to profess to be a 
son or daughter of God and then turn -away into this sin and 
think that they are never going to be brought to judgment is 
to be under a terrible delusion of the devil. There is no escape 
from the law of God; He has appointed a day when He will 
judge the people in righteousness. Down deep in my heart I 
pity any man who has ruined a woman. God have mercy on 
him. And I pity any woman that will try to lead away an- 
other woman's husband, and blight a family, and break up a 
happy home. God have mercy on the woman that will do 
that. 

" Thou shalt not steal." No thief is going to inherit the 
kingdom of God who does not repent and make restitution. 
I believe a great many men and women are kept out of the 
kingdom of God because they are not willing to make some- 
thing right in their past lives. They have been guilty of some 
dishonest act. A great many men get into the church and 
never make any progress; they never grow. I have heard 
ministers say, " Isn't it strange? What is the trouble? " 
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred there was something in 
their past lives that they didn't straighten out. 
26 



424 OFF HIS CONSCIENCE AT LAST. 

I hope the time will come when a man will be ostracised 
just as much if he steals a large sum as if he steals a small sum. 
Suppose he is president of a bank, or president of an insurance 
company, and steals money belonging to widows and orphans. 
I tell you that watering stocks and bonds and selling them to 
poor people and then " freezing them out," as they call it, is 
stealing. There are a good many more thieves than some 
people imagine, and there must be a good deal of restitution 
in this country before we can have a very deep work of grace. 
If a man is a thief, treat him as a thief, and don't make fish of 
one and flesh of another. 

When I was in Canada a man told me that when he was a 
boy a man gave him by mistake a piece of money that was 
called in Canada a " ten shilling " piece; it was just about the 
size of a quarter of a dollar, and it was gold. Instead of giving 
the boy a silver one shilling, as intended, the man gave him a 
gold ten shilling piece by mistake, and the boy kept it. The 
next day the man came back to the boy and said, " When I 
made change with you yesterday, didn't I give you a ten 
shilling piece instead of a one shilling piece? " " No, sir, you 
did not." For forty-three years that man had that on his con- 
science. At last the spirit of God got hold of him, and he just 
figured up the interest and handed principal and interest to an 
orphan asylum, and so got it off his conscience at last. If you 
have anything on your conscience, straighten it out at once. 
If your mind goes back to some transaction with your neighbor 
in which you cheated him, pay back every dollar at once. 

I was preaching in British Columbia some years ago and a 
man came to see me who said he wanted to become a Chris- 
tian; but he stated that he had been smuggling opium into 
the United States. He said: 

" It will take everything I have to make restitution. I 
have a young wife and little children, and I don't know what 
they will say." 

" I will tell you what your wife will say: she will tell you 
to do right," I said. 



MAKING RESTITUTION. 425 

" Will you go up and see her? " he asked. 

" Yes," I said, " I will go/' 

His home was prettily furnished with good furniture, paid 
for with the money that he had got by smuggling, I said to 
his wife : 

" Are you willing to have all this sold and start life over 
again?" The tears ran down her cheeks, and she said: 

" Mr. Moody, I am willing to give up everything I have to 
get right with God, and to have my husband get right with 
Him. I knew my husband had been smuggling." 

Everything in that house was sold, and that woman took 
the last penny out of her pocketbook and added it to the 
restitution money. They owned a building lot over the border 
line, in Seattle, and the man sold it for twenty-five hundred 
dollars, and I brought the money on to Washington. The 
light broke in upon that family. That is the kind of Chris- 
tianity we want. If you have stolen, make restitution. 

Some years ago I met a prominent banker who said, " I 
want you to tell me how to become a Christian." I told him, 
and I thought he came out for Christ in a very decided way ; 
but one night we had a Consecration meeting, and he went 
away. Just as he left me he said, " I didn't enjoy that meeting. 
It seems as if God does not want me or anything I have." I 
said, " My friend, there's something wrong in your life. Go 
alone and ask God to reveal it to you." The man went away, 
and in his closet, on his knees, he remembered he had swindled 
the government in a transaction in Montana. He figured up 
the amount, went down to the express office and sent fifteen 
hundred dollars to the United States Treasury as " Conscience 
Money." He said, " No sooner had that money gone from 
my hands than my conscience gave me the greatest joy." If 
you have stolen, go at once and make restitution. If you have 
a penny that belongs to some one else, return it. 

Perhaps some clerk has taken money from his employer, 
successfully covered up his tracks, and no one knows it but 
the all-seeing eye of God. But he can't be converted unless 



426 



CONFESSION AND REPARATION. 



he makes restitution. It may be that he has squandered the 
money, and can't make restitution; but it is his duty to go 
right to the man he injured and confess it. 

A man who had robbed his employer of five hundred 
dollars came to one of our ministers and told the story. He. 
wanted to become a Christian, but there was the five hundred 
dollars right in his mind all the while. 

"Well," said the minister, " your path is very clear; you 
must pay back the money." 

" But," said the man, " I can't, pay it back." 
" Then you must go to your employer and confess it." 
" But my employer is a hard-hearted man, and if I confess 
it he will put me in prison." 

" Well." «aid the minister, " I will go and see him." 
He went into the office of the man and told the story. 
" Now," the minister added, " I have reason to believe that 
that man has been converted of his sin. I believe if you will 
forgive it and give him a chance you may save his soul, and 
he will work and pay back the money." The employer said: 
" He shall never hear a word from me." 
The result was that the man became a Christian. 
I was once perfectly amazed at a question that was put to 
me to decide. A man went to a bank and received ten dollars 
more than he asked for, and, upon discovering the mistake, he 
took the ten dollars back. His friends called him a " fool." 
They said the cashier had made the mistake; and the man 
asked me if I didn't think he had made a mistake in taking the 
money back. What kind of a conscience has a person who 
asks such questions as that? Of course the money didn't be- 
long to the man who took it. Apply the Golden Rule. The 
idea of asking such a question, and asking me to decide the 
case, as if I were judge, jury, and lawyer. 

One of the students in our institution at Chicago rode on 
a street car and got off before the conductor came along to 
get his five cents. His conscience troubled him. He hap- 
pened to know the face of the conductor, and he took the five 



A GOOD INVESTMENT. a 2 j 

cents to him. The conductor called him a " fool." Was he 
a "fool?" He would have been a thief had he retained it. 
He had had his ride, and that five cents didn't belong to him. 
It belonged to the company. 

I will tell you the sequel of that. The conductor called 
him a " fool," and the student answered, " I am a Christian." 
And the conductor asked him to his house, and he and his 
wife were converted. The conductor had confidence in the 
young man. He believed in him. When the people of God 
set their faces to do right, the world will have confidence in 
their Christianity. It is these little, mean tricks we are con- 
stantly doing, — things not upright, that hurt the cause of 
Christ. 

Some time after, the student with some others attended a 
meeting. They had their Bibles with them, and as they got 
on a car a lawyer who wanted to make fun of them stepped 
up to this young man, and said, in a sneering way: 

" How far is it to Heaven? " And the young man replied: 

"Just one step. Out of Self into Christ." 

As the young men got off the car, the student whispered to 
the lawyer: 

" Generally when a man is inquiring about the distance to 
a place he is traveling towards it. I hope you are traveling 
that way." 

The arrow reached its mark. Weeks after, the lawyer 
came to the institution and wanted to find that young man. 
He didn't know his name, but he described him as best he 
could. They found him, and the lawyer said: 

" I want you to pray for me. I have not had any peace 
since that night." 

All came from the five cents. It was a good investment. 

A man once came into one of our meetings who wanted to 
become a Christian, but he said he had taken money belonging 
to his employer, and he wanted to know if he could not go into 
business and pay that money back. 

" No." 



428 THE STOLEN MONEY. 

"Why not?" 

" Because you can't pray over your business and ask God 
to help you. You can't pray over stolen money," 

The next night he wanted to make a compromise. 

" No, the only thing is to pay back that money." 

" I haven't got enough," he said. 

" Pay all you've got. Live on bread and water and pay 
back." 

He didn't like the terms. Finally, he came with a long 
envelope in which was nine hundred dollars and his watch. 
He had cleaned himself out. I got the two partners together 
in a private room and told them how he had been taking- 
money from them, and I said: 

" That is all he has left. There is the nine hundred dollars. 
There is his watch. There is the money that his wife had in 
her pocketbook. And yet it is short. Now he throws him- 
self on' your mercy. You can put him in the penitentiary if 
you want to." 

They said they didn't want to do that; for a man who is 
trying to do right should be helped. And both employers 
prayed for him. 

" Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." 
Love will not slander or lie. How often we have felt the sting 
of the slanderer's tongue, and our lives have been made bitter 
by some lie. I think one of our national sins is the way that 
men in office are abused. There's not a man that's not 
slandered. I believe as a general rule our public men have 
been good men; the Presidents in my day have been good men. 
But what false and slanderous reports have been started about 
them ! Let us keep in mind that if we hear evil or false reports 
of a man, and we take them up, and start them along, and push 
them on, we are equally guilty. 

If you have lied about a man, if you have slandered him, 
if you have abused him, go and tell him what you have done, 
and ask his forgiveness. I felt much encouraged one night 
when a man came into the inquiry-room and said, " Mr. 



ASKING FORGIVENESS. 



429 



Moody, I want you to forgive me." " Why," said I, " I have 
nothing to forgive you for; I never met you before." " Well," 
said the man, " I have been abusing you pretty hard for about 
a year. I was here last night and I got converted, and I want 
to ask your forgiveness." 

" Thou shalt not covet." Love is not covetous. I have 
heard people say, " I wonder why some people have so much, 
and I so little." Oh, we must not be covetous, for it is against 
the law. Let us ask God to write this law on our hearts. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

LOVE AND SYMPATHY. 

Won to Jesus by a Smile — "That Man Must be a Minister" — The 
Best for the Money — Light from the Celestial Hiils — No Heart 
so Hard but Love will Soften It — A Theory Upset — "I Ain't 
Never Comin' to This Sunday-school no More " — Bearing on the 
"Curiosity" Chord — Making up a Bundle for Johnny — Don't 
Want to go to Heaven if Grandfather is There " ■ — Going West 
to Get Rid of the Neighbors — "I Suppose It's my Duty to Say 
Something " — " Now, Moody, You Are All Wrong " — The 
Power of a Loving Word — A Story of the Civil War — "For 
Charlie's Sake" — "This Is Papa's Friend" — The Kiss of a 
Child — " I Don't Want Your Money " — Melted to Tears at the 
Name of " Brother " — Put Yourself in His Place. 

WHEN I was in London a minister said to me one 
night : " Mr. Moody, I want you to pray for a 
family who will be at the meeting to-night." When 
I arrived at the hall I saw in one corner a father, mother, and 
four or five children. I prayed for them. When I got home 
I asked the minister about the family, and he told me they had 
been won to Jesus by a smile. 

He said that one day he was passing by a house at the 
window of which a little child was standing. He was very 
fond of children, and he smiled to the child and bowed. The 
minister was in the habit of passing the house every day, and 
the second time he passed he noticed the child and smiled 
aeain. The next time there were several children there, and 

o 

he smiled and bowed again. When he came again the same 
children were standing there, and a lady was standing with 
them. He thought it would not be quite right to bow to the 
lady, so he smiled again at the children. The lady said to her 

(430) 



THE CHARM OF A LOVING LOOK. 



431 



little ones, when she saw him looking so pleasant, " That man 
must be a minister. I want you to follow him the next time 
he comes, for I am sure he is a minister." When he came 
round again the children followed him through several streets, 
until he went into an Independent church. The children fol- 
lowed him right in and they brought home a good report. 
They said they never heard such a preacher, although probably 
they didn't understand a word he said. But you know a little 
pat on the head and a kindly look goes a long way with chil- 
dren. Well, the result was that the mother came, and she 
brought the father. They all became converted, and thus a 
whole family were brought to Christ by a smile. 

My friends, it would be a good thing if every minister had a 
smile on his face. There are more men driven away from 
churches by sour looks than by almost anything else. A 
minister ought to have a clear conscience, and he would have 
a pleasant smile. Some of you may say, " Well, Christ was 
melancholy, and wept over sinners." Ah, but He wept for 
love. There is such a thing as a man weeping in his love. 

If our hearts go out toward men and we love them, they will 
be drawn toward us and we shall win them to Christ. We 
must win them to us first. The last time I heard Dr. Arnott 
speak he used a homely illustration. Said he, " Those of you 
who were brought up on a farm will understand when you wean 
a calf you must teach it how to drink. You take a bucket of 
milk and put your fingers in the calf's mouth, and when he has 
got a good hold you gently pull his nose right clown into the 
milk. Then you slip your fingers out, and the calf is drinking 
before he knows what he is doing. And so," he said, " if you 
want to win people to Christ you must go lovingly to them and 
lead them gradually to Him." 

We want to believe that the love of Christ is the best thing 
we can have. If a man wants to buy a horse he goes around 
till he finds the best horse he can get for his money. If a 
woman wants to buy a new dress, she goes from one store to 
another and searches till she finds the best dress she can buy 



432 POLITE INSINCERITY. 

for the money. That is the human nature the world over. 
So if we can show sinners, by love, that the religion of Jesus 
Christ is the best thing to have, we can win the world to us. 

But there is a good deal of what might be called sham love. 
People profess to love you very much, when it is all on the sur- 
face. It is not heart love. How often have you been in a 
friend's house, and the servant came in and announced to the 
mistress that somebody w r as waiting to see her in the front 
room ; and she says : 

" Oh, dear, I am so sorry he has come ; I can't bear the sight 
of that man " ; and she'll get right up and go into the other 
room and say : 

" Why, how do you do? I am so glad to see you ! " 

There is a good deal of that sort of thing in the world. I 
remember talking with a man one day, and an acquaintance of 
his came in, and he jumped right up and shook him by the 
hand — why, I thought he was going to shake his hand off, he 
shook so hard, and he seemed to be so glad to see him, and he 
coaxed and urged him to stay ; but the man said no, he would 
come another time ; and after that man went out my companion 
turned to me and said : 

" Well, he is an awful bore, and I am glad he's gone." 

I began to feel that I was a bore, too ; and I got out as 
quickly as I could. That is not real love ; that is love with the 
tongue, while the heart is not true. Now, let us not love in 
word and in tongue, but in deed and in truth. That is the kind 
of love God gives us, and he wants the same in return. 

I like to see in a Christian's face the light that comes down 
from the celestial hills of glory. To love those who abuse 
them is what the Master did ; and if we have His spirit, we will 
certainly love those who do not love us. I don't believe there 
is a man living whose heart is so hard but that love can break 
it. A friend of mine who had a large Sunday-school had a 
theory that he would never turn a boy out of the school on ac- 
count of bad conduct. " I considered," said he, " that those 
boys who behaved badly in Sunday-school had not had the ad- 



AN UNMANAGEABLE PUPIL. 



433 



vantages of a good bringing up, and for that very reason ought 
not to be turned out. I found out," said he, " that it was one 
thing to have a theory and another to put it into practice." 

On one occasion a boy came into his Sunday-school who 
nearly upset his theory. He put him under one teacher and 
nothing could be done with him ; he put him under another 
teacher, and the result was just the same. So he made up 
his mind to expel him, and do it publicly, and let the whole 
school know that he was expelled. But a lady teacher came 
to him and said : 

" I wish you would let me have that boy." 

" But," said he, " he's such a bad boy, and uses vulgar 
language. Not one of those men can do anything with him, 
and I am sure you can't." 

"'Well, I am not doing as much as I ought to for Christ, and 
it may be that I can win him." 

She was a lady of wealth and refinement, and he thought 
she wouldn't have patience with him. He gave her the boy, 
and for a few Sundays he behaved very well ; but one Sunday 
he behaved badly, and when she corrected him, he spat in her 
face. She quietly took her handkerchief and wiped her face. 

" Johnny," she said, " I wish you would go home with me. 
I want to talk with you." 

" Well, I won't. I won't be seen on the street with you, and 
what's more, I ain't never comin' to this Sunday-school no 
more." 

" Well, if you won't walk home with me, let me walk home 
with you." 

" No, I wouldn't be seen on the street with you, and I'm 
not coming to this old Sunday-school again." 

She knew if she was going to reach him she must do it then, 
and she thought she would try. Sometimes when you can't 
reach people in any other way, you can do it by exciting their 
curiosity. So she said : 

" If you should come to my house next Tuesday morning T 
shall not be there, but if you come, ring the front door bell and 



434 CONQUERED BY LOVE. 

tell the servant there is a little bundle on my bureau for you, and 
she will give it to you." 

" I don't want it. Keep your old bundle." 
" But she thought he might change his mind. He thought 
it over, and the more he thought about it the more he wanted 
to know what was in that bundle. So he went up to the house 
on Tuesday morning and the bundle was handed to him. In it 
was a little vest, a little necktie that she had made with her own 
hands, and a kind note which read : 

" Dear Johnny: Ever since you have been in my class I have 
prayed for you every morning and evening that you might be a good 
boy. I love you and want you to stay in my class. Do not leave me." 

Before she was up the next morning a servant came to her 
door and told her that a boy was in the drawing-room and 
wanted to see her. She went down and found Johnny weeping. 
She spoke to him kindly, and asked : 

" What is the trouble, Johnny ? " 

" Oh, teacher," he said, " I have had no peace since I got 
that note from you. I want you to forgive me." 

" Wouldn't you like to have me pray that Jesus may make 
you a Christian? " she asked. 

And she kneeled down and prayed with him ; " And," said 
the superintendent, " after that there was not a better boy in 
the school." Love conquered him. 

I want to tell you a secret. There are two classes of old 
people : some that are getting cross and crabbed in their old 
age, and some that are growing sunny and bright. You some- 
times see an old man who is all the time living on the past, 
nursing his troubles, and grumbling and finding fault with his 
lot ; and he grows cross and crabbed, and keeps things around 
him uncomfortable for everybody, — a man who is looking into 
the future with dark forebodings and with great anxiety. You 
have heard of the boy who didn't want to go to heaven if his 
grandfather was going there, because he was always saying, 
" Tut, tut, don't do this, or don't do that." I know a grand- 
father who fitted up a room with all the toys and things that a 



GOOD OR BAD NEIGHBORS. 



435 



child's heart could wish, and then said to his grandchildren, 
" Go in there and get all you want." If any of you grand- 
fathers and grandmothers find any crossness or crabbedness 
coming on, just nip it in the bud. There are a good many 
children like the girl who said her name was " Emma Don't " ; 
they nagged her so much with " Emma, don't do this," and 
" Emma, don't do that," that she thought her name was 
" Emma Don't." 

Many years ago when there was a good deal of emigration 
to what was then called " out West," a man in Connecticut 
started for Ohio. To the hotel-keeper who was questioning 
him he said he was going West to get rid of his neighbors and 
surroundings. Said the hotel-keeper : 

''' You will find the same sort of people out there." 

" I hope not." 

" But you will." 

He went on. After awhile another man came to the same 
hotel, and he had a conversation with the same hotel-keeper, 
and he asked : 

" What takes you West? " 

" Well," said he, " I've got a family of boys, and they are 
growing up, and I am afraid they will slip off West and leave 
me all alone, and I thought I would live out there and have 
my family with me ; but," said he, " the hardest part of leaving 
is to part from such good neighbors as I had in Connecticut." 

" Well," said the hotel-keeper, " you will find just such 
people wherever you go." 

See the point? Have you got good neighbors? If not, 
whose fault is it? If you have bad neighbors, when you go 
home look in the looking-glass and you will find the man who 
is to blame. 

Love must be the motive power in all our actions. If our 
actions are merely performed from a sense of duty God will 
not accept them. I've heard this word duty in connection 
with Christian work till I am tired of it. I have been in meet- 
ings where some one has got up and asked a brother to speak. 



43^ 



LOVE AND DUTY. 



After considerable persuasion he would rise and say : " Well, 
I did not intend to speak when I came here to-night, but I 
suppose it is my duty to say something." It is the same with 
the Sunday-school; many teachers take up classes merely from 
a sense of duty. There is no love in them, and their services 
go for nothing. Let us throw a little love into our actions, 
and then our services will be acceptable to God. 

Suppose I should tell my wife that I loved her because it is 
my duty — what would she say ? When my mother was liv- 
ing I was in the habit of going to see her every year. Suppose 
I had said to her, " Mother, you were very kind and good to 
me when I was young; when father died you worked hard 
to keep us together, and so I have come to see you because it 
is my duty." Don't you think she would have said, " Well, 
my son, if you only come to see me because it is your duty, you 
need not come again." And that is the way with a great many 
of the servants of God. They work for Him because it is their 
duty — not for love. Let us abolish this word duty, and feel 
that it is only a privilege to work for God, and let us try to re- 
member that what is done merely from a sense of duty is not 
always acceptable to Him. 

One night when I had been speaking in this way in London 
a minister said to me after the services : " Now, Moody, you 
are all wrong. If you take the word duty out from its con- 
nection with our works you will soon have all the churches and 
Sunday-schools empty." 

" Well," said I, " I will try and convince you that I am 
right. You are married ? " 

" Yes." 

" Well, suppose this was your wife's birthday, and you 
bought a book for a present to her, and you went home and 
said, ' Xow, wife, this is your birthday ; I thought it was my 
duty to buy something for you — so here's a book; take it.' 
Would your wife not be justified in refusing it? " 

" Well," said he, " I think you are correct; she would be 
risfht in refusing it." 



HELPFUL WORDS. 437 

That wife would appreciate a present given through love, 
not duty. What Christ wants is that we shall work for Him 
because we love Him. 

You do not know how far a loving word will go. When 
I went to Chicago years ago I remember how I walked up 
and down the streets trying to find a situation ; and I recollect 
how, when they roughly answered me, their treatment chilled 
my soul. But when some one would say : " I would like to 
help you, but I can't ; but you will be all right soon," I went 
away happy and light-hearted. That man's sympathy did me 
good. I believe there are thousands who are waiting for some 
one to come and offer a little sympathy. They want someone 
to take them by the hand and help them. 

In Detroit, at an international convention of the Young 
Men's Christian Association, Judge Olds was present as a dele- 
gate from Columbus. One evening he was telling about the 
mighty power that Christians summon to their aid in this pe- 
tition " for Christ's sake ! " " in Jesus' name ! " and he told a 
story that made a great impression on me. When the Civil 
War came on, he said, his only son left for the army, and he 
became suddenly interested in soldiers. Every soldier that 
passed by brought his son to remembrance ; he could see his 
son in him. He went to work for the soldiers. When a sick 
soldier came to Columbus one day, so weak he couldn't walk, 
the Judge took him in a carriage, and got him into the Soldiers' 
Home. The Judge became President of the Home, and he 
used to go down every day and spend hours in looking after 
the soldiers, and seeing that they had every comfort. He spent 
on them a great deal of time and a great deal of money. One 
day he said to his wife, " I'm giving too much time to these 
soldiers. I must stop it. There's an important case coming 
on in court, and I've got to attend to my own business." He 
said he went down to his office that morning resolved in future 
to let some one else take care of the soldiers. After a while the 
door opened and a soldier hobbled slowly in. The man 
fumbled at something in his breast pocket, and pretty soon he 



438 A SON'S APPEAL. 

produced an old soiled paper and handed it to the Judge. The 
father saw it was in his own son's writing, and this is what it 
said : 

" Dear Father, — This young man belongs to my company. He 
has lost his leg and his health in defense of his country, and he is going 
home to his mother to die. If he calls on you treat him kindly, 

" For Charlie's sake." 

" For Charlie's sake." The moment he saw that a pang 
went to his heart. He got a carriage, helped the maimed soldier 
in, drove home, put him into Charlie's room, sent for the family- 
physician, kept him in the family, and treated him like his own 
son. When the young soldier was well enough to go home, 
he took him to the railway station, put him in the most com- 
fortable place in the car, and sent him on his way home to his 
mother. " I did it," said the old judge, " for Charlie's sake." 
Now, whatsoever you do, my friends, do it for the Lord Jesus' 
sake. Do and ask everything in His name ; in the name of 
Him " who loved us and gave himself for us." 

The world wants sympathy about as much as anything. 
The Son of God passed by the mansions and went down into 
a manger that he might sympathize with the lowly. If a man 
knows you are in sympathy with him, his heart, however hard 
it may be, will be broken. A gentleman came to me one day 
to get me interested in a young man just released from the 
penitentiary. I said : 

" Bring him in." 

The gentleman brought him in, and I took him by the hand 
and told him I was glad to see him. I invited him to my 
house and introduced him to my family as my friend. When 
my little daughter came into the room, I said : 

" Emma, this is papa's friend." 

She kissed him, and the man sobbed aloud. I said : 

" What is the matter ? " 

" Oh, sir, I have not had a kiss for years. The last kiss I 
had was from my mother, when she was dying. I thought I 
should never have one again." His heart was broken. 



LONGING FOR SYMPATHY. ^Q 

Another young man, just out of the penitentiary, came to 
see me, and after I had talked with him for some time he didn't 
seem to think I was in sympathy with him. I offered him a 
little money. 

" No," he said, " I don't want your money." 

" What do you want? " 

" / want some one to have confidence in me! " 

I knelt down and prayed with him, and in my prayer I 
called him " brother," and he shed tears the moment I called 
him brother. 

So if we are going to reach men we must make them believe 
we are their brothers. We must put ourselves in their places. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE FUTURE STATE — HEAVEN AND WHERE IT IS — 
ITS INHABITANTS AND RICHES --SHALL WE KNOW 
EACH OTHER THERE? 

The Future State — What the Bible Says About Heaven — "Every- 
where" Meant "Nowhere" — How Far Away is Heaven? — 
t Heaven a Locality — -A Glimpse of the Heavenly World — The 
Dying Soldier — An Incident in Mr. Moody's Life — The Vacant 
Chair — After the Funeral — "Where is My Mamma? " — Read- 
ing His Own Record — An Incident of the Civil War — Calling 
the Roll of Heaven — The Dying Soldier Who Answered, 
"Here ! Here !" — An Old Scotchman's Answer — "This Is All 
Mine" — Dying as He had Lived — The Man Who Could Talk 
of Nothing but Corner Lots — The Card with a Gold Border — 
A Question Often Asked of Mr. Moody— Shall We Know Each 
Other in Heaven? — The Recognition of Friends There — They 
Do Not Lose Their Identity — "We Shall be Satisfied." 

THERE is a class of people who tell us that we know 
nothing about the future state, and that it is useless for 
us to speculate about it. Now, there is one thing we 
do know, and that is, that we are not going to stay in this 
world very long. I was preaching in Providence many years 
ago, and recently preached there again. A good many men 
that sat by my side all through the earlier meetings were gone. 
I missed them. I saw nine men sitting in the front row, all 
of them, I should judge, living on borrowed time, — the time 
allotted to them, three score years and ten, having already run 
out. They knew their pilgrimage here' was nearly over, and 
that they would soon go hence. 

When I was in Dublin I heard of a little boy who, while 
being taught in one of the mission schools, had found Christ. 
He fell ill and died, and his father, a poor workingman, who 
had never looked into the Bible, was heart-broken. They told 
him that Johnny had gone to Heaven. " Well," he said, " I 

(440) 



LEARNING THE- WAY. 



441 



am going to follow him." And every night he took a tallow- 
dip into his room and studied his Bible. Four years after the 
boy's death the father might have been seen, still reading his 
Bible night after night. If you had asked him what he was 
looking for he would have told you he was learning the way 
to Heaven where his Johnny had gone. It was a sensible 
thing to do. 

Now the moment you talk about Heaven, some people 
say, " I wish you would talk about something else. What do 
you know about Heaven? " Do you think that God Almighty 
would have, said so much in the Bible about Heaven if He 
wished us to remain in ignorance about the future state? 

I was on my way to a meeting one night with a friend, and 
he asked, as we were drawing near the church : 

" Mr. Moody, what are you going to preach about? " 

" I am going to preach about Heaven." I noticed a frown 
on his face, and I said, " What makes you look so? " 

" Why, your subject. What's the use of talking upon a 
subject that's all speculation? It's only wasting time." 

Men who say that this subject is all speculation have not 
read their Bibles. Allusions to it are scattered all through 
the blessed Book. If I were to read to you all the passages 
upon Heaven, from Genesis to Revelation, it would take me 
all night and to-morrow to do it. I think if there is any book 
in the world that can tell us anything about our future state, 
we certainly ought to be interested enough to read it. 

If I were going to a foreign land to spend the rest of my 
days there, I would like to know all about its climate, its in- 
habitants, their customs, their privileges, and their govern- 
ment. Everything about that land would interest me. Sup- 
pose you were going to Africa, or Alaska, or China, to make 
one of those places your home, and that I had just come from 
one of those countries, how eagerly you would listen to me. I 
can imagine how the old gray-haired men, and the young men, 
and even the deaf, would crowd around, and put up their hands 
to learn something about it. 



442 



THE CITY OF ETERNAL LIFE. 



My friends, where are you going to spend eternity? Your 
life here is very brief. Life is but an inch of time, a mere fiber 
that will soon be snapped, and you will be ushered into eter- 
nity. Where are you going to spend it? If we are going to 
spend our future life in Heaven, it becomes us to try to find 
out all we can about it. 

There is nothing that we hold on to as we do to life. A 
man will go all around this world in search of health to add a 
few years to his life. Look at the circles broken by death. 
Look at the hospitals for the insane, the imbecile, the idiotic. 
Look at the homes made dark and wretched by sin. Think 
of the world's misery and woe. Look at the wretchedness that 
can be found in any of our cities. But oh, how sweet life is ! 
With what tenacity we cling to it. Yet we know that this life 
is but for a day. Not a day passes without funeral proces- 
sions winding through the streets. Look at the bending forms 
of men and women tottering to the grave. No little village 
but has its burial plot. But there is one city in the universe 
of God without a cemetery; one city without a hearse; one 
city where there is no night, no sorrow, no weeping; one city 
where Death never enters, where there is no separation, where 
there are no gray hairs and bending forms. There perpetual 
youth is stamped upon every brow; there they live on and on 
forever, a life as pure as God's life, and as lasting as God's life. 
It is in the reach of everyone. 

Soon after I was converted a pantheist got hold of me and 
tried to draw me back to the world. I don't know a worse 
man than he who tries to pull young Christians down. He is 
nearer the borders of hell than any man I know. When this 
man knew I had found Jesus he tried his best to pull me down. 
He argued with me, and as I did not know the Bible very well 
then, he got the best of me. The only way to get the best of 
these atheists, pantheists, or infidels is to have a good knowl- 
edge of the Bible. Well, this pantheist told me God was 
everywhere — in the air, in the sun. in the moon, in the earth, 
in the stars, but he reallv meant nowhere. And the next time 



THE REALITY OF HEAVEX. 



443 



I prayed it seemed as if I was not praying anywhere or to 
anyone. 

Heaven is a destination — it is a locality. Some people 
say there is no Heaven, and some will tell you that this Earth 
is all the Heaven we have. How low a man has fallen when 
he comes to that conclusion ! We have ample evidence in the 
Bible that there is such a place as Heaven, and we have abun- 
dant manifestation that His influence from Heaven is felt 
among us. He is not with us in person; only in spirit. The 
sun is about 95,000,000 miles from the earth, yet we feel its 
rays. A great many people might ask, " How far away is 
Heaven? Can you tell us that? " I don't know how far away 
it is, but there is one thing I do know: He can hear our 
prayers as soon as the words are uttered. There has never 
been a prayer said that He has not heard; not a tear shed that 
He has not seen. We don't want to learn the distance. What 
we want to know is that God is there, and the Bible tells us 
that He is. 

We are not in darkness about the future state. Do you 
suppose God is going to let His children wander around in 
darkness, not knowing whether they shall make Heaven their 
home, or be banished forever from His presence? The Bible 
says, " From the place of His habitation He looketh upon all 
the inhabitants of the earth," and " Look down from Thy habi- 
tation, from Heaven." I have no sympathy with the idea that 
Heaven is everywhere, but nowhere in particular. I believe 
it is a locality as much as is Boston. It is a city as much as 
London or Paris. We must bear in mind that God is a person, 
and if He is a person, He must have a dwelling-place. 

Then we find in Revelation that it is called a city, and we 
find Abraham looking for that "city which hath foundations, 
whose builder and maker is God." He believed that was real. 
The well-watered plains of Sodom did not have any attraction 
for Abraham. Why? Because with the eye of faith he saw a 
better country. 

Let us look for a moment at John's description of that 



444 " NO NIGHT THERE." 

place: "And the twelve gates were twelve pearls; every sev- 
eral gate was of one pearl : and the street of the city was pure 
gold, as it were transparent glass. And I saw no temple 
therein : for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the 
temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of 
the moon, to shine in it : for the glory of God did lighten it, 
and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of them 
which are saved shall walk in the light of it : and the kings of 
the earth do bring their glory and honor into it. And the 
gates of it shall not be shut at all by day : for there shall be no 
night there.'' On a little gravestone in a cemetery where a 
blind child was buried was inscribed these words : 

«$o m$w r 

She lived in perpetual night here — in perpetual darkness ; but 
the thought that filled her mind, that animated her and lifted 
her up out of her troubles and sorrows was that she was going 
to a land where there was no night. 

I have had this question raised : " What does Paul mean 
about the third heaven? Are there three degrees? " Now, 
the Hebrews in their writings acknowledge three heavens. 
The first was where the showers come from and where the 
birds fly. The second was the firmament where the sun, 
moon, and stars are. The third was the dwelling-place of God. 
When Paul spoke about the third heaven that is what he 
meant. 

I firmly believe that Stephen was not the last man that 
looked into Heaven. Many in your day and mine have had a 
glimpse of that world. I knew an infidel, whose wife was an 
infidel also. They had one little girl, and the father told me 
himself that he didn't know where she ever heard the name of 
God, excepting in blasphemy. At length the father, mother, 
and a neighbor stood around her dying bed, and a heavenly 
glory illumined her face. She was so young she could not speak 
plainly. Her name was Julia. Just before she breathed her 
last she reached out her little thin hands, and said, " Dulie is 



"CARRY ME OVER THE MOUNTAINS." 445 

coming, God ! " Didn't that little girl look into the Eternal 
City? How many times have we seen loved ones passing 
away, and it seemed as if Heaven burst upon us. Many have 
looked into Heaven since Stephen did. 

I knew a mother whose little boy, as he was dying, said: 

"What mountains do I see yonder, mother?" 

" There are no mountains there, my child," she said. 

u Yes, there are, mother, don't you see them? Please take 
me over in your arms." 

And the mother knelt and prayed, and told her boy that 
Jesus would be with him. Then he said : 

" Mother, don't you hear them? " 

" Hear whom, my child? " 

" Hear the angels, mother. They are just on the other side 
of the mountains. Carry me over the mountains, mother." 

" I can't do that, my child," she said. " The Saviour will 
take you over. Jesus will be with you." 

And then he breathed a little prayer, and faintly said: 

" Good-by, mother, Jesus has come to carry me over the 
mountains," and the little sufferer was gone. 

If we were filled with the spirit, Heaven would be very real 
to us. A soldier in a soldier's meeting during the Civil War 
related this incident. His brother came to him one day and 
said he had enlisted. He went to the recruiting office and put 
his name down next to his brother's. They had never been 
separated. They were in the same Company, marched to- 
gether, tented together, messed together, and were in a number 
of battles together. At last, in the battle of Perryville, a bullet 
passed through his brother's body. He could not stay with 
him, but putting his knapsack under his head he made him as 
comfortable as he could, and started on. As he turned re- 
luctantly away, his brother called: 

" Charlie, come back." 

" What do you want, brother? " 

" Kiss me on my lips," he said, " and take that kiss home 
to mother, and tell her I died praying." 



446 A GLIMPSE OF THE GLORY BEYOND. 

As he was turning away he heard his wounded brother say: 

" This is glorious! " 

" What is glorious? " 

" Oh, I see Christ in Heaven! " 

Lying in a pool of his own life blood, he looked up arid 
caught a glimpse of the glory beyond. I believe if we are in 
the Spirit when the hour of death comes we may catch a 
glimpse of the glory, too. 

There is a class of people who say that the soul becomes 
unconscious and sleeps until the resurrection. I cannot be- 
lieve that. There is another class who tell us that there is no 
hereafter at all, and that when we die that is the last of us. 
Now, if a man receives eternal life when he is converted, and 
that is what God says he receives, how are you going to bury 
eternal life in the grave? All the undertakers in the world 
couldn't build a coffin big enough to bury eternal life. That 
life cannot go into the grave. That life cannot sleep until the 
resurrection. It is life without end — eternal life, and that 
cannot die. 

Now, it is clear that Christ is in Heaven. I believe that is 
what is going to make Heaven so attractive. It is not the 
pearly gates, nor the jasper walls, nor the river bursting from 
the throne of God, nor the streets of gold, nor the tree that 
bears twelve manner of fruits, with its leaves for the healing of 
the nations, nor the angels and the archangels. What makes 
Heaven so attractive is that we are going to see the Father 
who gave the Son for us, and the Son, face to face. 

What makes home attractive? Is it beautiful statuary, or 
costly paintings on the wall? Is it handsome furniture, or 
beautiful grounds? I tell you many such homes are nothing 
but gilded sepulchers. No joy there, no light there. I re- 
member going home some years ago. For fifty years I had 
frequently gone to my home, and I always found mother there. 
Once I thought I would surprise her, and so I didn't let her 
know I was coming; but when I arrived, she had gone away, 
and home was as desolate as it could be. I thought it was 



3> 




THE CHARM OF HOME. ^^ 

home that was attracting me, but it was my mother. After 
she had passed away, I went off on a preaching tour, and on 
my return I went home again, and her room, her chair, were 
vacant. The plants had been tenderly cared for, and the fire 
in the room was burning brightly, and everything was just as 
it had been when she was with us. I said to my brothers, " It 
was my custom to pray with mother, and talk with her Sunday 
afternoons, and if you will agree, we will keep it up." 

What makes home so attractive? It is the loved ones 
there. How eagerly we look forward to Thanksgiving and 
Christmas, when families come together again. I believe that 
is what Heaven is going to be, a great Christmas where fami- 
lies will be reunited. I have been told of a little girl whose 
mother was very ill, and one of the neighbors took the child 
away to stay until the mother was better. She grew worse, 
and died, and they thought it was better that the child should 
remember her mother as she was when living. After the 
funeral was over, and everything suggestive of death had been 
removed, they made the home as bright and cheery as possible, 
and brought the little one back. She had cried herself to sleep 
every night, and was full of joy to be at home, and she ran 
with childish delight from room to room, calling : 

" Mamma! Mamma! " 

When she had gone all over the house, and could not find 
her mother anywhere, she sat down and cried as if her heart 
would break. 

" Take me away," she said. " I don't want to stay here. 
Mamma isn't here." 

It was not the home that the little one was longing to get 
back to; it was the mother. 

Take Christ out of Heaven and what would it be? What 
makes Heaven so attractive is that Christ is there. 

In China, it is said, when a man comes into court they have 
two great books, one a black one, called the " Book of Death," 
and another, a white one, called the " Book of Life." If a man 
is found innocent, they put his name down in the Book of Life. 



45o 



THE BOOK OF LIFE. 



If he is found guilty, his name is put down in the Book of 
Death. 

Every name is this hour either in the Book of Life or in 
the Book of Death. Where is your name? 

A man said to me some years ago, " What's the use of talk- 
ing such foolishness as that, as if our names are kept in a book 
in Heaven ? " I looked through the Bible, and was surprised 
to find how frequently books are spoken of in Scripture; in 
Daniel, in Revelation, etc. We find Paul writing and sending 
greetings to certain ones, whose " names are in the Book of 
Life." 

Once when in England I was invited to sit with a judge on 
the bench while he was trying some cases. A prisoner was 
brought in, and the clerk asked him if he had ever been 
arrested before. He said, " No, sir." An officer opened a 
book and said, " Yes, sir, this man was arrested at such and 
such a time." It was the fourth or fifth time; and when the 
man saw the record he turned pale. Every man must meet his 
record. I believe God makes every man write his own record, 
and by and by he must meet it. 

A lady friend of mine was returning to this country a few 
years ago, and she left London for Liverpool with quite a large 
company of Americans to take the same steamer. They went 
to the Northwestern Hotel, at that time the largest hotel in 
Liverpool, and found that all the rooms had been engaged; 
and all but this lady were compelled to search for other lodg- 
ings. She said that she had secured rooms. " Why," the rest 
exclaimed, " they have all been taken for several days." 
" Yes," she said, " but I sent my name ahead and engaged 
rooms." That is just what Christians are doing — sending 
their names in ahead. Do you want a room in Heaven? Set 
your heart and your affections on things above, and not on 
things on earth. 

I would rather a thousand times have my name written in 
the Lamb's Book than have all the wealth of the world rolling 
at my feet. A man may achieve fame in this world, but it will 



THE DYING MOTHER'S CHARGE. 



451 



fade away ; he may accumulate wealth, but it will prove a 
bubble. He may belong to a good many churches; he may 
be an elder, or a deacon, and be a bright light in his church, 
and yet he may not have his name written in the Book of Life. 
Judas was one of the twelve, and yet his name was not written 
in the Book of Life. 

A man in a temperance meeting was urged to sign the 
pledge for his mother's sake. He said, " She is dead." "Ah, 
but she may see you from Heaven." If your boy is in Heaven, 
try and get some other mother's boy in. If your boy is 
wandering from God, and is so far away that you can't reach 
him, try to get some other mother's boy into the kingdom, 
and while you are helping him some one may be helping your 
son. 

I entreat you, parents, to be sure and have your children's 
names in the Book of Life. That should be your aim, rather 
than to buy and sell, and leave millions of money to make the 
way to perdition easy for them. Look into the results where 
men have worked for years to leave property to their children. 
It has often been a means of swift destruction to them. 

A mother lay dying in one of our Southern cities. When 
she found her end was near, she requested the father to bring 
the children in separately, that she might give them her dying 
blessing. The oldest of the seven was brought in first, and 
the mother talked to him, and gave him her blessing, and a 
motto to carry through life. Then she took the next, and the 
next, and she kept on till the last, a little infant, was brought 
in. She kissed it over and over again, and gave a message to 
the father to keep until the little one was old enough to under- 
stand it, and then it was to be given to the child. It was very 
hard for the mother to part with the baby. She seemed to 
wish to hold it to the last. They took the child from her, and 
she looked up into her husband's face and said, " I charge you, 
bring all these children home with you." 

And so God charges us. The promise is to ourselves and 
to our children. We can»have our names written in the Book 



452 ANSWERING THE CALL. 

of Life if we will, and then by the grace of God we can call our 
children to us and know that their names are also recorded 
there. That great roll is being called, and those whose names 
are recorded are summoned every day, every hour. It is being 
called to-day. If your name were called, could you answer 
with joy? You have heard of the soldier who fell in battle in 
our Civil War. While he lay dying, he was heard to cry: 

"Here! Here!" 

Some of his comrades ran to him, thinking he wanted 
water, but he raised his trembling hand and said: 

"Hush! They are calling the roll of Heaven, and I am 
answering to my name.'' 

Then in a faint voice he whispered: 

" Here! " and passed away. 

If your name should be called to-day, are you ready to 
answer " Here! " 

It doesn't take long to tell where a man's treasure is. Take 
a man whose heart is set upon money, and tell him how to 
make a few thousand dollars, and how his face will light up. 
Take those who make pleasure their god, and tell them where 
they can have a night of pleasure, and see how their eyes will 
brighten. That is where their heart is. If my treasures are 
laid up on high, I do not need a minister to come along every 
week and prepare me to live in Heaven, because I am already 
living there; where the treasure is the heart will be also. Some 
one asked an old Scotchman if he was on the way to Heaven, 
and he said: " Why, man, I live there; I am not on the way." 

If you lay up your treasures this side of Heaven, — I don't 
care what the treasures are, or where they are laid up, you are 
doomed to disappointment. When you leave this world, you 
cannot take a penny with you. They tell a story of Stewart 
and Astor, the New York millionaires, meeting in the other 
world. Astor met Stewart at the bank of the river and wanted 
to borrow money enough to get over, and Stewart said he 
hadn't got a cent. Both left millions behind them, but after 
they died they had nothing they could use in the other world. 



A BEGGAR THROUGHOUT ETERNITY 



453 



There is such a thing as being rich down here and being poor 
through all eternity; rich in this world and an eternal beggar 
in the world to come. The richest man is the man who lays 
up his treasures where they will last. 

During the Civil War a friend of mine visited one of those 
great Western farms, for the purpose of getting a donation of 
grain for wounded soldiers. The owner took him up into the 
cupola of his house, and said: 

" Do you see those herds of horses and cattle? There's 
thirty miles of fencing around that pasture. See what a great 
farm it is. There's enough raised on it to feed thousands and 
thousands of men, and there's not a mortgage on it. This is 
all mine." 

After he had pointed out his earthly treasures, he was asked 
how old he was, and, on being told, my friend said: 

" Then you are living on borrowed time. My friend, what 
have you got up yonder? " 

" What do you mean? " 

"What have you got beyond this life? Have you any 
treasures laid up in Heaven? " 

" No, I can't say that I have." 

" Well, is it possible that a man of your shrewdness, enter- 
prise, and judgment should make such a wreck of life? Are 
you going to be rich here for a few short years, and be a beggar 
in eternity? " 

" It does look rather strange if you look at it in that way, 
doesn't it? " 

He died as he had lived, and his children quarreled over his 
possessions, and the lawyers got the most of them. 

Once, when in a Sunday-school in California, I asked if 
there was anyone present who could write a plain hand. 
" Yes," was the answer. So we put up a blackboard, and the 
lesson proved to be from the text, " Lay up for yourselves treas- 
ures in Heaven." I said. " Suppose we write upon that 
board some of the earthly treasures. We will begin with 
'gold.' ' The teacher readily wrote down gold, and they all 



454 



HEAVENLY TREASURES. 



comprehended it. " Well, we will put down ' houses ' next, 
and then ' land.' Next we will put down ' fast horses.' " 
They all understood what fast horses were — they knew a good 
deal more about fast horses than they knew about the King- 
dom of God. " Next we will put down ' tobacco.' ' The 
teacher seemed to shrink at this. " Write it down," said I, 
" many a man thinks more of tobacco than he does of God. 
Next we will write down ' rum.' ' : He objected to this — 
didn't like to write it down at all. I said, " Down with it." 
Many a man will sell his reputation, his home, his wife, chil- 
dren, his present and eternal welfare for it. 

" Now," said I, " suppose we write down some of the heav- 
enly treasures. Put down ' Jesus ' to head the list, then 
' Heaven,' then ' river of life,' then ' crown of glory.' ' : So we 
went on till the column was filled, and we drew a line and 
showed the heavenly and the earthly things in contrast. They 
could not stand comparison. We could not but see the 
superiority of the heavenly over the earthly treasures. Well, 
it turned out that the teacher was not a Christian. He had 
gone to California on the usual hunt — gold; and when he saw 
the two columns placed side by side, the excellence of the one 
over the other was irresistible, and his soul was won for God. 

It makes all the difference in the world where your heart is. 
An old minister in Kentucky had a son in Chicago in the real 
estate business, and with him it was " real estate," " real 
estate," morning, noon, and night. The old father came to 
visit him, and he found his boy's mind full of real estate. He 
had lost all his Christianity. He could talk of nothing but 
corner lots, corner lots, corner lots. He seemed to live on 
corner lots. The old gentleman was very much grieved. 
One day he went down to the office and his son said, " Father, 
I am going out for a few minutes, and if any one comes in, you 
can tell them there is a very good lot here that is worth so 
much; and here is another nice lot that is worth so much; and 
here is a good one that is worth so much ; " and so on. The 
old gentleman didn't have much heart for the business ; his 



THIS EARTH NOT OUR HOME. 



455 



thoughts were somewhere else. By and by a gentleman 
came in to inquire about a lot, and the old minister 
said, " My son says this lot is worth so much. And here's 
another one worth so much. I don't know anything about 
them, but I tell you, my friend, I would give more for standing 
room in the new Jerusalem than for all the corner lots in 
Chicago." 

The old gentleman had set his heart on the new Jerusalem, 
and Chicago hadn't a grip on him. And the son came in and 
found that his father had gone to preaching. You can tell 
where the heart is by what it is set upon. It is a good thing 
to be sure of standing room in the new Jerusalem. 

Now, people say, How are you going to set your affections 
on things above ? How control your thoughts ; how get them 
into a heavenly channel? If you were interested in France 
you w T ould get books and read up on French history, literature, 
art, and politics, and you could get so full of France that you 
couldn't talk about anything else. 

Our soldiers in the Civil War thought tents were good 
enough for them; they wanted to do their fighting and get 
home again. Home was away back in the North. So we 
are down here fighting the battles of the Lord. We are not 
going to stay here. We are only pilgrims and strangers. 
Our home is up yonder. The crowning time is coming. I 
like to look ahead to the time when I shall hear the words, 
" Good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy 
Lord." Our friends are there. Those who served Christ on 
earth, those who have been true to God, have been gathering 
there for six thousand years. Abel was the first to enter that 
world. He was the first to sing the Song of Redemption. 
What a choir has been gathered there since ! Once on my 
return from England, I received a letter from a young man 
there, who was greatly attached to his mother. In England 
they have a custom, when a friend dies, of sending out mourn- 
ing cards with wide black borders, announcing the death. 
When the card came announcing the death of his mother, in- 



456 "FOREVER WITH THE LORD/' 

stead of a black border, it had a gold border, because the 

mother had gone to a city of gold. Some one sent him these 

lines: 

"I shine in the light of God; 

His likeness stamps my brow; 
Through the valley of death my feet have trod, 
And I reign in glory now! 

" No breaking heart is here, 

No keen and thrilling pain, 
No wasted cheek where the frequent tear 
Hath rolled and left its stain. 

" O friends of mortal years, 

The trusted and the true, 
Ye are watching still in the valley of tears, 
But I wait to welcome you. 

"Do I forget? O, no! 

For memory's golden chain 
Shall bind my heart to the hearts below 
Till they meet to touch again. 

" Each link is strong and bright, 
And love's electric flame 
Flows freely down, like a river of light, 
To the world from whence I came. 

" Do you mourn when another star 

Shines out from the glittering sky? 
Do you weep when the raging voice of war 
And the storms of conflict die? 

" Then why should your tears run down, 
And your hearts be sorely riven. 
For another gem in the Saviour's crown, 
And another soul in heaven? " 

Those lines came to him as if they had been sent from 
Heaven by his sainted mother; and he said, " If she has gone 
into that life of love and glory, I think I ought to leave off the 
black border and put on one of gold." 

I cannot tell you with what joy I read that poem when my 
own mother passed away. I don't think of my mother as dead. 
She is " forever with the Lord/' 

Very often people come to me and say: " Mr. Moody, do 



WE SHALL KNOW EACH OTHER THERE. 457 

you think we shall know each other in Heaven? " Often the 
question comes from a mother who has lost a clear child, and 
who wishes to see it again. Sometimes it comes from a child 
who has lost a mother, or a father, and who wants to recognize 
them in Heaven. A great many people are anxious to know 
where their loved ones are, and whether they shall know them 
when they see them again. There is just one verse in Scrip- 
ture in answer to this question, and that is: "I shall be satis- 
fied." It is all I want to know. If I do not know my mother 
in Heaven, do you think I shall be " satisfied " ? My brother 
who went up there I shall see, because I shall be satisfied. We 
shall see all those we loved on earth up there, and if we loved 
them here we shall love them ten thousand times more when 
w r e meet them there. Who gave me love for my mother? 
Who put that love into my heart? Then will He not satisfy 
that love? I shall know her, and better than I did here. You 
will know that child of yours when you get there. 

If we are not going to know our loved ones in the here- 
after I think that is where love must end. But I think love is 
going to increase, and we are going to know them far better 
than we ever knew them in this world. I shall see Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob, in the Kingdom of God. They do not lose 
their identity. Moses had been gone from this world fifteen 
hundred years when he came back to the Mount of Transfig- 
uration. Doesn't it look as if Peter and James and John knew 
him? Elijah had been gone nine hundred years, and they 
knew him. I believe that when I get to Heaven I shall know 
Moses without any introduction. I haven't any doubt but that 
I shall know all these men whose acquaintance I have made in 
the Bible. We are clearly taught that God the Father is there, 
and that He is a person, that He has a location, that He lives 
in Heaven, and that we shall see Him and be with Him, be- 
cause we find all through the Scriptures that Christ is with the 
Father, and They are one, and His prayer was that His dis- 
ciples might be with Him. Surely we shall know each other 
there. 

28 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE OVERCOMING LIFE. 

An Incident in London — Mr. Moody's Experiences when He was 
Converted — " Trouble with D. L. Moody " — At the Outbreak of 
the Civil War — Going to War with a Whoop — Self Control — 
"Mother, Where's My Collar?" — Taking a Dose of Unpleasant 
Medicine — Offering His Wife a Bouquet Instead of an Apology — 
A Story of Anger and Contrition — A Manly Apology — Story 
of Three Millionaires — Waking Up and Finding Himself a Rich 
Man — Mean and Contemptible People — The Jealous Eagle and 
Its Fate — The Boy and the Echo — A Wise Mother — The Rival 
Merchants, and How They Were Reconciled — Mr. Moody's 
Experience at a Dinner Party — A Sad Sight — A Father Playing 
Cards for Money — Washing out Religion with a Bucket of Cold 
Water — Men Whose Religion is Only Skin Deep. 

WHEN I was converted I thought that the battle was 
fought and the victory was won. I soon found out 
that I was mistaken, and that the battle had only 
just begun. In the Bible the life of the Christian is called a war- 
fare, a conflict. He is like a new recruit in the army ; he has 
to go on long marches, is subject to strict military discipline, 
and must learn a good many things before he becomes a real, 
true, faithful soldier. If you have never taken the pains to 
study what is called " the two natures," you will find it a very 
healthful exercise of the soul. I was a great mystery to my- 
self when I was converted ; I thought the old nature would be 
made over into a new one ; but I found I had two natures : one 
the higher nature, and the other the lower ; one carnal, the 
other spiritual. Then the conflict began. I had no conflicts 
within myself until I was born of Heaven ; in fact, I thought I 
was about as fine a character as the world ever produced. 
When the new life dawned upon me, the new creation, then I 

(458) 



OUR GREATEST ENEMY. acq 

found that the spirit lusted against the flesh, and the flesh 
against the spirit, and I had more trouble with D. L. Moody 
of the old creation than any man who ever crossed my path. 
There may be meaner men in the world, but I never had as 
much trouble with any of them as I did with myself. 

There was, some years ago, a very promising man in Lon- 
don, who proved to be one of the most earnest laymen of the 
time. He was a great star in fashionable society, but he 
came out for Christ. Some time after he had been converted 
a devoted Christian lady said to him, " What have you found 
to be your greatest enemy since you became a Christian ? " 
He said, " Well, I think the greatest enemy that I have found 
is myself." " Ah," said the deeply-taught woman, " The King 
has taken you into His presence, for it is only in the presence 
of the King that we are taught that lesson." 

If a man has obtained self-control, has achieved victory 
over the old nature, the carnal nature, he has had a hard fight. 
I can't tell how great a spiritual uplift I received when that 
truth dawned upon me. God didn't take away my old nature. 
I found I was tempted just as much after I was converted as I 
was before. There came such a gush of life into my soul that 
for months the old nature was overcome, but one day there 
came a flash of temper. I thought my temper had gone. If 
you think that your temper is gone, if you think the old man 
is dead as soon as you are converted, you are greatly mistaken. 

It is by faith that we are going to overcome. When the 
Civil W^ar broke out there were men who really believed it 
would be over in a few months. William H. Seward, then 
Secretary of State, declared that the war wouldn't last over 
ninety days ; and young men enlisted and went to war with a 
whoop ; they were going down to thrash the South, and were 
going to make quick work of it. They were four years about 
it, and on both sides about 500,000 men went to their graves. 
What was the trouble? They underestimated the strength of 
the enemy, and overestimated their own strength. It wasn't 
quite so easy to overcome as they thought. 



460 



ROWING AGAINST THE CURRENT. 



The reason why so many men and women fail in their 
Christian life is because they don't stop to count the cost; they 
don't realize that the Christian life is a conflict, and that no 
man can win the victory without supernatural power. I 
thought when I was converted that I could lay my oars in the 
bottom of the boat, fold my hands, and sweep right into the 
arms of God's love ; but it was not long before I found I had 
got to row against the current, not with it. That is what 
makes character. If we get into the boat and just float along 
toward that eternal shore, and there is no struggle, it will not 
develop character. We have got to go against the current. 
There is no escaping that. The men and women that over- 
come are the ones that make character. Some have more to 
overcome than others. Some people are pretty bad, and are 
obliged to struggle hard ; some are pretty good ; and there are 
some men and women who seem to have been born with beauti- 
ful traits ; but I have a good deal more respect for one who 
overcomes a jealous, mean, selfish disposition than I have for 
those who have not had that struggle. Joseph was a beauti- 
ful character ; he didn't have so much to overcome as Jacob. 
Lot had a very weak character that had to be bolstered up by 
his Uncle Abraham, the great, sturdy oak. You will find about 
a million Jacobs where you find one Joseph ! Josephs are 
scarce ! It is folly for any man to attempt to overcome the 
world around him unless he has overcome the world within 
him first. If wives want to control their husbands they must 
get control of themselves first. A wife that has self-control 
will manage the whole house ; but if she hasn't self-control, she 
can't control anybody. A mother who cannot control her- 
self cannot control her child. What we want is to get control 
of the enemies within. I believe that the greatest victory a 
man or woman can achieve on earth is to conquer self. He 
that ruleth his own spirit is mightier than he that taketh a city. 
Alexander had the whole world at his feet, but he found that 
he couldn't control Alexander. Napoleon would have had 
control of the world, but he couldn't control Napoleon. 



PATIENCE AND SELF-CONTROL. 46 1 

The lust of the flesh is appetite. I must either control my 
appetite or it will control me. Suppose a man has an appetite 
for opium, or for strong drink, or for anything that is injurious, 
and it has gained the mastery over his will, I can assert that no 
slave ever had a harder master than that man. The question 
is, have you got control of the appetite, or has it got control 
of you? 

Paul admonishes us to be sound in faith, in charity, in pa- 
tience, in love. You wouldn't have a preacher that was un- 
sound in the faith. But if he was unsound in temper, or un- 
sound in love, you might still call him a splendid man. There 
is the same authority to be sound in patience as there is to be 
sound in faith ; and if you begin to use discipline on church 
members who are not sound in patience, what would become of 
the church? You wouldn't have many members, and many 
ministers would be without pulpits. I don't want you to think 
I don't sympathize with you ; I do sympathize. I know how it 
is with that mother who has a large family of children ; I know 
how she is pulled this way and that. James comes in and says, 
" Mother, where's my collar? " John comes along and asks, 
" Mother, what have you done with my shoes ? " and Mary 
comes along and says, " Mother, where's my hat? " Mother 
is pulled this way and that, and she gets out of patience and 
frets, and the children fret, and the husband isn't much better. 
Sunday morning he says, " Mary, why are you not ready for 
church ? " He hasn't done a thing to get the children ready 
for church ; the mother must get all of them ready on time, and 
get herself ready, and all he has to do is to put his hat on and go. 

The minister who hasn't patience and can't control his 
temper had better get out of the pulpit. I know lots of minis- 
ters who are not worth a snap of my finger ; they can't control 
their tempers ; they go into the pulpit and scold and find fault 
with their people, and lose their power and lose their influence. 
We must control ourselves if we ever expect to control our 
families, our enemies, or any one else. 

A person without temper is like a piece of soft steel, not 



462 



HOW TO OVERCOME. 



good for anything. When steel has lost its temper you throw- 
it away. People that have no temper have no force of char- 
acter. Peter had temper, Paul had temper, and Elijah had 
temper; and what we want is to bring our bodies under and 
get control of our temper. People call it a weakness or a mis- 
fortune, or, worst of all, excuse it as being inherited. That 
is the meanest of all ! You talk about inheriting these things 
from your father and mother ; if you have got all they had and 
haven't lost anything, that is no excuse for you. 

You ask, " How am I going to overcome bad temper? " 
When you find yourself saying or doing a mean thing, say to 
the one you have wronged that you are sorry. And when you 
have done that twenty-five times you will stop doing mean 
things. It takes a good deal of courage to say, " I am wrong." 
That is " keeping the body under." As Paul said, " I keep 
under my body, and bring it into subjection." The tempted 
person may speak of his temper as a misfortune or a weakness. 
He is mistaken. It is a sin. But some one says, " You know- 
nothing about it." I do. It was once a word and a blow with 
me, and the blow came pretty quick, before the word cooled ; 
nothing would satisfy me better than knocking the man down. 
I was very much like the Irishman, who said he was " never at 
peace unless he was fighting somebody." 

A lady once came to me and said : 

" Mr. Moody, I haven't got as much patience as I had five 
years ago ; instead of growing in grace I have been losing 
ground; I wish you would help me." 

" I should like to help you," I said, " but I am afraid you 
won't like the- medicine ; it isn't very pleasant to take. The 
next time you lose your temper, or lose control of your tongue 
and say sharp, cutting things, as soon as you realize that you 
have done it, go to the person you have wronged and ask for- 
giveness." 

" Oh, no," she said, " I wouldn't like to do that." 

"No," I said, "of course you wouldn't; and there is the 
trouble, but vou will never w r in the victory until you do." 



STAMPING OUT LIES. 



46; 



I have known a husband to give his wife a good scolding 
and go out of the house in a mad fit, but before he had gone far 
his conscience would smite him. Then he would say to him- 
self, " I didn't treat my wife right this morning, and when I 
go home I will take her a big bouquet." Tons of bouquets won't 
cover that thing up ! If a man wants to conquer that habit let 
him go to his wife and say, " I feel mean and contemptible for 
speaking as I did this morning, and I want you to forgive me." 
After he has done that half a dozen times he will be cured. 
You say, " I should like to see you try it yourself ! " I have 
tried it, and I know how it works. I want to tell you another 
thing : Some people seem to think that the preachers who 
have nothing to do but write sermons and preach them ought 
to be very angelic ; but they have the same things to overcome 
that you have. Preaching isn't going to make me any better, 
and talking for half an hour isn't going to give me self-control ; 
I must get it as other people do ; it is a conflict, it is a battle. 

A lady came to me some time ago and said : 

" Mr. Moody, I have got so in the habit of exaggerating 
that some of my friends accuse me of lying. I feel very badly 
about it, and I have tried hard to overcome it, but I can't." 

" I think you could," I said, " if you tried in the right way. 
I think there is a way if you really want to try it." 

" Pray, tell me what it is ? " she said. 

" The next time you exaggerate to anyone go and tell them 
you lied to them, and ask them to forgive you." 

" Oh," she said, " I wouldn't like to call it lying." 

" A lie is a lie, and you have got to stamp it out ; after you 
have made half a dozen confessions of lying, you won't lie any 
more," I said. 

Confession is crucifying to the flesh ; people don't like to 
confess, but if you are going to gain the victory over sin you 
have got to do it. 

A minister's sister married a lawyer who was a very promi- 
nent man, but an infidel. She thought that she was going to 
win her husband to Christ, and she was constantly holding up 



464 HEROISM IN CONFESSING. 

her brother as a most lovable and beautiful character, a man 
with a great deal of self-control. This irritated the husband, 
and he said to himself, " I will bring that man down. I will 
show my wife that her brother is not so angelic as she thinks 
he is." So one evening the lawyer accused the brother of 
doing a very disreputable thing. The minister denied it, but 
the lawyer insisted that the evidence against him was well 
supported. The brother flew into a rage and said : 

" I won't stay in the house if you think that of me ! " He 
got up and went out, and slammed the door after him. After 
he had gone the lawyer said to his wife : 

" Your brother is very angelic, isn't he ? I tell you, he's no 
better than the rest of us." 

The next morning about five o'clock a servant knocked at 
the infidel's door and told him that the minister, his brother-in- 
law, was down stairs and wanted to see him right away. He 
dressed himself and went down. The minister said : 

" I want to apologize for speaking to you as I did last night ; 
I am very sorry I lost my temper, and I want you to forgive 
me." 

The infidel had to admit that he had accused him unjustly ; 
and when he went back he said to his wife : 

" I believe your brother is a Christian if there ever was one. 
I never would have done that ; I believe in Christianity of that 
kind." And he, too, soon became a Christian. It takes a 
hero to confess ! 

Then there is covetousness ; that is another inward sin. 
Many a man is a slave to his money ; money is his god ; it has 
got him by the throat, and it holds him right there. A good 
many Christian men and women go on piling up wealth year 
after year until it gets complete mastery over them. Mr. 
Dnrant, the man who established Wellesley College, told me 
that the greatest trouble he had was with covetousness. One 
day he awoke to find that he was a rich man, and the question 
came up, whether he would let money be his master, or be 
master of his money? He said the battle raged in his mind 



OVERCOMING COVETOUSNESS. 465 

for some time, and at last he won the victory, and out of that 
victory came Wellesley College. There is more said in the 
Bible against covetousness than against drunkenness. Men 
bow and scrape to a covetous man, and kick a drunkard out 
of society. We must overcome covetousness or it will over- 
come us. 

Once when I was preaching in Baltimore John W. Garrett 
told me about George Peabody and Johns Hopkins. When 
young men both were clerks together in Baltimore. Both 
were bachelors, and they were rivals to see which would be 
the richer. They went on piling up millions and millions. 
One day both Hopkins and Peabody were at Garrett's table 
together. And Hopkins said to Garrett : 

" Peabody is giving away lots of money." 

" Yes," said Peabody to Garrett, " I wish you would tell 
Hopkins to make his will. He has no one but nieces and 
nephews, and they do not need his money. It would be a pity 
to have him die and not give away his money." 

" Nothing makes me so angry," Hopkins replied, " as to 
have people tell me what to do with my money. If anybody 
comes and asks me for money I never give anything. I only 
give as I please." 

Garrett didn't propose to be choked off that way. With- 
out looking at either of them he said : 

" Peabody, which have you enjoyed the most, making 
money or giving it away? " 

He looked up and saw Hopkins pricking up his ears and 
listening. And Peabody said : 

" Well, Garrett, that is a hard question to answer. There 
is a great deal of satisfaction in making money, and there's a 
deal of excitement about it ; and then the possession of money 
gives a man power. But I looked ahead a few years ago, and 
I got to thinking, and I knew that I could not take it away with 
me, and that many people with large fortunes have been ruined. 
After thinking it over I decided that it would be a blessing to 
better the condition of the London poor. I did not believe in 



466 THE JOY OF GIVING. 

giving them money, but I could make their homes better. So 
I got a few men together as trustees and I cut a slice off the 
loaf, and I never did anything that hurt me so much as when 
that money went out of my hand. Well, they got the building 
done. The rooms were all filled, birds were singing in the 
sunlight, plants were .growing in the windows, and little chil- 
dren were playing in a yard in the center instead of in the 
streets. As I walked through that building, a feeling came 
over me that I had never experienced before, and from that 
hour I have enjoyed giving far more than making." 

Inside of forty-eight hours Hopkins was making out the 
will that handed over his millions to the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity, and to the Johns Hopkins Hospital, covering thirteen 
acres, the largest on the continent. I believe what the Bible 
says is true : " It is more blessed to give than to receive." 

Jealousy is an enemy to be overcome. Have we not con- 
tempt for a really jealous man, or a jealous woman? Haven't 
we ? Have you ever had trouble with anything of that kind ? 
There is a fable of an eagle that could fly a little higher than 
another eagle ; and the other was so jealous that he asked a 
hunter to bring his rival down. The hunter said, " I would if 
I had a feather to wing my arrow." So the eagle gave him a 
feather, and he took aim at the other eagle, but didn't hit him. 
Then he said, " I will try again if you will give me another 
feather." So he kept on shooting and missing until every 
'feather was gone, and then he shot the jealous eagle. If you see 
somebody a little higher up than you are, and you want to 
bring him down, let me tell you it is a mean, contemptible thing 
to do. People sometimes think they have overcome jealousy, 
and the first thing they know up it comes from a different direc- 
tion. If you find other people doing things that you condemn, 
it is a good thing to take a look at yourself and see if you are 
not guilty of the same thing. I have found myself doing that 
lots of times — condemning people for doing certain things, 
and then found I was doing exactly the same things myself. 

Some one has compared this life to an echo, because, they 



THE LESSON OF THE ECHO. 467 

say, other people treat us just about the same as we treat them. 
A story is told of a little boy who had never heard an echo. 
One day he was out at play, and he heard over in the woods his 
own voice. He shouted : 

" Hello there ! " and the echo came back : 

" Hello there ! " 

" Who are you? "* 

" Who are you? " 

" You are a mean boy ! " 

" You are a mean boy ! " 

" I am going to whip you ! " 

" I am going to whip you ! " 

He ran and told his mother that there was a very bad boy in 
the woods that was going to whip him. His mother under- 
stood how it was, and said : 

" I don't think he's a bad boy at all ; go out and speak kindly 
to him and see if he doesn't speak kindly to you." So he went 
out again and tried it once more : 

" Hello there ! " 

" Hello there ! " 

" Who are you? " 

" Who are you? " 

" You are a good boy ! " 

" You are a good boy ! " 

" I love you ! " 

" I love you ! " 

Then he went back and said to his mother : 

" After all, he is a good boy ; I was mistaken about him." 

Treat people kindly, and they will treat you kindly ; snap at 
them and they will snarl at you. 

Two merchants were rivals and a great deal of jealousy 
existed between them. One of them became converted and he 
went to the minister and said, " I am still jealous of that man, 
and I don't know just how to overcome it." " W T ell," said the 
minister, " if a man comes into your store to buy goods, and 
you cannot supply him, just send him over to your neighbor." 



468 A CURE FOR JEALOUSY. 

" Oh," he said, " I wouldn't like to do that." " Well," said 
the minister, " you do it and you will kill jealousy." He 
promised he would, and when a customer came into his store 
for goods which he did not have, he would send him across the 
street to his neighbor's. By and by the other merchant began 
to send customers over to this man's store, and it was not long 
before they became firm friends. That is the way to overcome 
jealousy. 

Now we come to outside enemies. After we get victory 
inside we are ready to engage enemies outside. A woman 
who is strong at home is strong all around. When a man gets 
self-control it seems as if he could go out and conquer the 
whole world ; but if he is weak here the world will trip him up. 
If he has not won the victory over himself he needn't talk about 
gaining it over outside enemies. 

Custom is one of the outside foes we have to meet. It is 
common to hear people say it is the " custom " to do so and so ; 
never mind, if the custom is a detriment to us we will go 
against it. 

Fashion is an enemy. How many people say it is the 
" fashion " to do so and so. Never mind ; I will go dead 
against fashion if it is going to weaken my influence or cripple 
my testimony ; I will overcome it. 

A friend of mine was once playing cards with another 
gentleman, and he thought he would play for a small amount 
of money. But he noticed that his little son got intensely 
excited, and was very anxious that his father should win. The 
father went to bed and got to thinking, and he said to his wife, 
" Our son was terribly excited over that game, and I'm afraid it 
won't be long before he, too, will be playing for money." And 
he went to his son and said, " You were very much excited over 
that game." " Yes, I was," said the boy. " Well," said the 
father, "I did wrong; I am never going to play cards any 
more." That man was an infidel ; yet he had sense enough to 
see that he was ruining his son. I would to God that the 
fathers and mothers would wake up and see the danger of going 



"THIS IS NO PLACE FORME. 



469 



too far. What is the harm of this game or that ? My friends, 
I will never play a game of chance as long as I live. I would 
not run the risk. 

Many years ago while I was in London I was invited to a 
dinner party in a Christian family, given in honor of two or 
three American friends. It was the custom to drink wine, and 
there were no less than seven kinds of liquor on that table. At 
the table sat an elder, and near him was a young lady whom 
he urged to drink. I saw her face already flushed with the 
wine, and she kept declining, but he persisted in urging. It 
was late and I thought a good many of them ought to be in 
bed. I said, " This is no place for D. L. Moody," so I asked to 
be excused. I left the table, and the man of the house fol- 
lowed me up stairs. 

" What does this mean? " he said. 

" There is altogether too much drinking here for me," I 
replied. 

" You are no gentleman, sir," he said, angrily. 

" I hope I am a Christian, if not a gentleman. I am not 
going to sit there and countenance that," I answered. And 
I stepped out. 

Whenever anything comes into my life that separates me 
from God, and robs me of peace and joy and love, and hides His 
face from me, I must give it up. I don't care what it is. 

It is the custom in some places, on some occasions, to offer 
wine to young people. A lady told me only a short time ago 
that she had »to strike several families off her visiting list be- 
cause she would not have her children go where wine was 
offered to them. I am talking about " Christian people." 
When drunkenness is everywhere, and the wretchedness and 
woe it causes are so plainly to be seen don't you think you 
ought to take your stand against it, and throw all your influence 
against such a dangerous custom? People say "They all do 
it." They don't. Make up your mind that not all will do it, 
if you stand alone. " Oh, but," some one says, " a man is very 
weak if he can't resist temptation." A man may be made of 



470 



A DANGEROUS EXPERIMENT. 



iron and have a giant will; he may be able to drink just so 
much and stop when he pleases ; but he may have a son who 
does not possess the will-power of his father, and if he attempts 
to follow his father's example he may be ruined. It is a 
dangerous experiment. 

A little breath of opposition or of persecution may overcome 
us. A man once arose in one of our meetings and said he had 
been serving Christ for six months, but that a deacon had 
thrown a bucket of cold water over him and it had taken the 
religion all out of him. I said, " My friend, religion never 
struck in very deep if a bucket of cold water could take it out." 
It was only skin deep. If you have got a strong inside fire, cold 
water won't overcome you. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

PERSONAL WORK IN THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 

Enthusiasm Essential to Success — Teachers Pulling One Way and 
Parents Another — The . iscouraged Superintendent — People 
Who are Like a Bundle of Shavings — ■ Taking Hold and " Holding 
On" — A Touching Incident — The Little Girl Mr. Moody was 
Proud Of — A Rich Young Woman's Choice — An Amazed 
Father and Mother — " Can You Give Me a Class? " — The Shoe- 
maker's Boy — "None of Your Business" — Gaining a Raga- 
muffin's Confidence — "If you Go There again I'll Flog You"- — 
Taking His Floggings in Advance — President Lincoln's Visit 
to Mr. Moody's Sunday-school — Feeling Two Inches Taller — 
A Class of Frivolous Girls — A Pathetic Story — Working and 
Dying — A Night Mr. Moody Never Forgot — How He Lost His 
Ambition for Business — An Affecting Parting — "I Will Meet 
You Up Yonder." 

FOR years I was superintendent of a Sunday-school in 
Chicago, and I learned one thing — that any man or 
woman who ever took charge of a class without en- 
thusiasm did not succeed. 

It is sometimes very discouraging when you have been 
pulling seven days in the week one way to get children inter- 
ested, and their parents have been doing all they could to pre- 
vent you from prosecuting your work. I notice that those who 
get discouraged, and give up their classes, and go from one 
school to another, from one field to another, are never success- 
ful ; but those who persevere day after day, week after week, 
month after month, are always blessed. 

I met a young man in Chicago who had been toiling for 
years in the Sunday-school without having any results, so far 
as conversions were concerned. There were about fifty boys 
in his class, and only a few of them were Christians. He came 
regularly to our meetings, was one of the ushers, and every 

(470 



472 AN UNFAITHFUL LEADER. 

once iii a while there would be a request for prayer for that 
class. After a while their hearts were moved, and out of one 
hundred and eighty scholars — the class having grown to that 
number — over one hundred had been converted and were 
working for the Saviour. " Ye shall reap, if ye faint not." 
If we will only take this for our motto, and never despair even 
if we do not see any fruit to-day, or next week, or next month, 
we shall not be discouraged. Hold on to God's promises, and 
believe that He can reach the hardest heart. 

In one city where we preached, a Sunday-school superin- 
tendent came to one of our morning meetings ; he felt that he 
was not faithful enough, and he was greatly troubled. He 
went to his pastor and said : 

" I want to resign my position as superintendent ; I do not 
feel that I ought to be superintendent any longer." 

" What is the reason ; why do you want to resign ? " the 
minister asked. 

" Well," said he, " I am afraid I am not converted. If I 
am, I am so cold no one would know it ; I am not fit to pilot 
sinners to life eternal, not fit to be superintendent." 

" Don't you think that, instead of resigning, you ought to 
ask God to bless you? " the minister said. 

And the minister knelt with him right there, prayed with 
him, and in the course of two or three days he found relief, 
and peace, and happiness, in believing; and instead of want- 
ing to give up his school, he wanted to get his school blessed 
likewise. His heart hadn't been right, and that was the reason 
why his Sunday-school work had not been successful. He 
confessed this to his school, telling them that he had not been 
faithful, but that he had at last got right with God. Mark the 
result. The teachers confessed that they were in the same con- 
dition their superintendent had been in. All the teachers in 
that school re-consecrated themselves to God and His service. 
The pastor of that church told me that he took one hundred 
and thirty into that school, after the superintendent and the 
teachers were ready for their duties as Christian workers. 



PERSEVERANCE — PUNCTUALITY 



473 



In some cities where we have been, teachers have come to 
me and said, " Mr. Moody, pray for my Sunday-school schol- 
ars ; " and I would just take the teachers aside and point out 
their duties and show how they themselves ought to be able to 
pray for their pupils. Very often they would come to the next 
meeting, and the prayer would go up from them, " God bless 
my scholars." 

Let me say to you, young converts who have just com- 
menced a Christian life, go out into the vineyard at once and 
find some work to do for the Master. Just persevere, and if 
the work does not seem to prosper, go right on. God never 
uses Christians that get discouraged and disheartened, and His 
kingdom is never built up through them. What we want is 
courage to persevere. 

Bring your classes together, and pray to God to convert 
them. Suppose all our Sunday-school teachers should say: 
" I will try to bring my children to Christ," what a reformation 
we should have ! Let no one say that that boy is too small, or 
that girl is too puny or insignificant to come to Christ. Every 
one is valuable to the Lord. 

I like these men who take hold of classes and don't give 
them up ; who attend their own church every Sunday, and are 
not drawn away by some eloquent preacher from abroad who 
happens to be filling a neighboring pulpit. They are right 
there fifty-two Sundays in the year ; you know where to find 
them ; they are always at their post of duty ; all the while their 
influence increases. But these teachers who are all the time 
running here and there never accomplish much. 

A good many people are like a bundle of shavings — a spark- 
falls, and quickly the shavings are gone, and there's scarcely 
any ashes left. My friends, ten thousand such Christians are 
not worth one who makes constancy his motto. We don't 
want any revival Christians — got enough of them; don't 
want any Sunday Christians — got enough of them. What's 
wanted are men who are established in good works, men that 
hold on. A man who does one thing well is a man of power. 

2<) 



474 



A FAITHFUL TEACHER. 



The man who tries a hundred things generally fails at every- 
thing. If God calls me to Sunday-school work I will stand by 
my post. If God calls me to lead a prayer-meeting or read the 
Bible I must hold on, and it won't be long before God will bring 
success, for He has promised that " Ye shall reap if ye faint 
not." God will try you ; you will have some things to dis- 
courage you, but you must hold on. 

How God uses weak things ! Ralph Wells tells a touch- 
ing incident of an old lady who lived in New York State during 
the Civil War. She was poor, seventy-five years old, had a 
Sunday-school class, and she lived two miles from the church. 
One Sunday when it stormed very hard she thought she could 
not possibly go to Sunday-school, because it was so far away. 
She said: " It storms so hard I think I won't go; " but the 
thought came to her, " Suppose some of my scholars should be 
there. If they come through this storm it will be because they 
are interested." 

So the old lady walked two miles in a bitter, driving storm, 
and she found one young man of her class present. She talked 
with him about the Saviour and prayed for him. It is good 
sometimes to come down to one pupil. Where there are a 
great many in the class each one may think you mean some 
one else when you talk to them all, but when only one is present 
there can be no mistake. He knew that the teacher meant 
him. The next Sunday he was not there, and she made in- 
quiries and learned that he had enlisted in the army. Two 
years after she learned that he was dying in a Southern hos- 
pital, and he sent word to her that that stormy Sunday was the 
turning point in his life. He had tried to forget it, but could 
not. The thought that she had come two miles in that terrible 
storm to do a little good made a deep impression upon him, 
and led him to the Saviour. He sent back a rejoicing message. 
Was she not repaid for walking that two miles in a winter 
storm? What she accomplished would have paid her for 
going a hundred miles. That Sunday-school scholar and his 
teacher are in glory now. 



CHILDREN AS WORKERS. ajc 

Little children are apt to be overlooked ; but they, too, must 
be led to Christ. Children have done a great deal in His vine- 
yard. They have led parents to Jesus. Christ can find useful 
work for these little ones. A teacher in Southern Illinois who 
had taught a little girl to love the Saviour said to her, " Can't 
you get your father to come to Sunday-school? " Her father 
was a swearing, drinking man, and the love of God was not in 
his heart. But under the tuition of that teacher the little girl 
went to him and told him of Jesus' love, and finally led him 
to the Sunday-school. What was the result? He was instru- 
mental in founding over seven hundred and eighty Sunday- 
schools in southern Illinois. What a great privilege a teacher 
has — the privilege of leading souls to Christ. Let every 
teacher say : " By the help of God I will try to lead my scholars 
to Christ." 

A little girl only eleven years old once came to me in a 
Sunday-school and said : " Won't you please pray that God will 
make me a winner of souls? " I felt proud of her, and my 
pride was justified, for she became one of the best winners of 
souls in this country. Suppose she lives threescore years, and 
goes on winning four or five souls every year ; at the end of her 
life's journey there will be three hundred souls on the way to 
glory. How long will it be before that little company swells 
to a great army. Don't you see how that little mountain rill 
keeps swelling till it carries everything before it ? Little trick- 
ling streams have run into it, till now, a mighty river, it has 
great cities on its banks, and the commerce of all nations float- 
ing on its waters. So when a single soul is won to Christ you 
cannot see the result. A single one multiplies to a thousand, 
and they into ten thousand. Perhaps a million souls will be 
the fruit, we cannot tell. We know that the Christian who has 
turned so many to righteousness shall shine forever. 

If a Sunday-school teacher does not love his scholars — if 
lie hurries through the lesson as if it were something he wished 
to get through with, it will not be long before they find it out. 
They will see it in his eyes, in his face, in his actions. 



476 



WINNING SOULS THROUGH LOVE. 



A few years ago a little boy came to one of our mission 
Sunday-schools. His father moved to another part of the city 
about five miles away, and every Sunday that boy went past 
thirty or forty Sunday-schools to the one he attended. One 
Sunday a lady who was out gathering scholars met him. and 
asked him why he went past so many schools. " There are 
plenty of others," said she, " just as good." 

" They may be just as good, but they are not so good for 
me," he said. 

" Why not ? " she asked. 

" Because they love a fellow over there," he answered. 

Ah ! love won him. " Because they love a fellow over 
there! " How easy it is to reach people through love! Win 
the affections of your scholars if you would lead them to Christ. 

I have been told of a young lady whose parents were very 
wealthy and who sent her to be educated in the best schools 
they could find. They were very anxious that she should move 
in the highest circles of society. Among her teachers was a 
lady who worked for Christ. By constant labor she won this 
young girl's heart, and pleaded with her to become a Christian. 
She succeeded, and the young lady became a worker in the 
vineyard of the Lord. She labored with her schoolmates, and 
God used her in winning a number of young ladies in that 
school to Christ. She returned home, and her father and 
mother wanted her to shine in fashionable society. They were 
amazed that she had no desire for worldly things, and that they 
couldn't get her interested in them. She went to a Sunday- 
school superintendent and said, " Can you give me a class in 
your Sunday-school? " He was surprised to hear her ask for 
a class, and he told her that he had none that he could give her 
then. She went away with a resolve to do what she could out- 
side of the school. 

One day she saw a little boy running out of a shoemaker's 
shop, and behind him was an old shoemaker with a wooden 
last in his hand chasing him. He had not run far when the last 
was thrown at him, and he was struck in the back. The bov 



FINDING A PUPIL. 



477 



stopped and began to cry. The spirit of God touched that 
young lady's heart and whispered, " There is your work." 
She stepped up and spoke to him kindly, asking him if he was 
hurt. 

" None of your business," he said. 

She went to work to win his confidence. She asked him 
if he went to school. 

" No." 

" Well, why don't you go to school? " 

" Don't want to." 

" If you will come," she said, " I will tell you beautiful 
stories and you can hear the singing." 

" Well, they will laugh at me if I go." 

" If you will come you can be in my class, and I won't have 
any one in my class but yourself, and I won't laugh at you," 
she said. 

At last she gained his confidence, and he promised to go. 
She agreed to meet him on the corner of the street, and the next 
Sunday, true to his promise, he waited for her at the place 
designated. She took him by the hand and led him into the 
Sunday-school. He had no shoes on, his hands and face were 
dirty, his clothes were ragged, and his hair was not combed. 

" Can you give me a place to teach this little boy ? " she 
asked of the superintendent. 

He looked at the boy, but they didn't have any such looking 
little ones in the school. A place was found, however, and she 
sat down in the corner and tried to win his soul for Christ. She 
had found something to do for the Master. 

When he went home he told his mother that he had been 
among the angels ; that he had never heard such sweet singing 
in his life. But when his father found out where he had been, 
he said : 

" That is a Protestant Sunday-school, and if you go there 
again I'll flog you." 

The next Sunday the boy slipped in to the Sunday-school 
again, and when the father found it out he flogged him, and told 



478 INTEREST STRONGER THAN FEAR. 

him he would flog him every time he went there. He kept 
going, however, and took the floggings. One Sunday he said 
to his father : 

" I wish you would flog me before I go and then I won't 
be thinking about it all the time I'm there." 

My friends, there is something stronger than the fear of 
punishment. Get hold of a person's heart, and he will brave 
all kinds of opposition. When the father found that he couldn't 
flog it out of him he said : 

" If you will give up the Sunday-school I will give you 
every Saturday afternoon to play, or you can have all you can 
make by peddling." 

The boy went around to see the teacher and said : 

" Father says I may have every Saturday afternoon if I will 
keep away from the Sunday-school, and I have been thinking, 
if you are willing, I would say to him that I would give it up. 
Then I can come around and spend Saturday afternoons with 
you, and we will have more time together than we would on 
Sunday." 

" Certainly," the teacher said, " I will do it." 

So she gave up her Saturday afternoons to him. If she was 
invited out on those afternoons, she was always engaged ; if 
she had callers, she was engaged. She gave herself up to 
teaching that boy the way into the kingdom of God. She 
labored with him earnestly, and at last the light of God's spirit 
broke upon his heart. 

One day while he was selling his wares at the railroad sta- 
tion he slipped and fell from the platform as a train of cars was 
approaching, and the whole train passed over both of his legs. 
A physician was summoned, and the little sufferer looked up 
into his face and said : 

" Doctor, will I live to get home? " 

" No," said the doctor, " you are dying." 

" Will you tell my mother and father that I died a Chris- 
tian ? " 

They bore the little fellow's mutilated body home, and with 



MR. MOODY'S SUNDAY-SCHOOL. 479 

it his last message that he died a Christian. Oh, what a noble 
work was that young lady's in saving that little wanderer I 
How precious the remembrance to her ! 

I wonder how many young ladies there are who would give 
up their Saturday fternoons just to lead one boy into the king- 
dom of God ! I think they are very scarce. I have found them 
very scarce who will begin work of that kind and hold on to it. 
I don't believe there is a child anywhere that could not be led to 
Christ if some godly man or woman would work earnestly 
to get him. 

I want to tell you how God woke me up. I used to be 
active in general Christian work ; but I had no experience in 
this personal work, this individual work ; like a man talking to 
another about being one of Christ's disciples, or a teacher talk- 
ing to Sunday-school scholars on Sunday, and then going 
around and talking to them one by one during the week. At 
one time I hired five pews in the church and filled them every 
Sunday; but I never spoke to one of the men I got there. I 
thought the real orthodox way of preaching sermons was the 
best; I never spoke to one of them. No one called my atten- 
tion to it, and I was perfectly satisfied with my work. I soon got 
permission to use the large Music Hall — the city gave me the 
use of it — and I worked to fill it ; if I could run that school up 
to twelve or fifteen hundred, I was greatly elated ; if it ran 
down below a thousand I was depressed. I would work all day 
Sunday to get scholars in. I remember when President Lin- 
coln came and visited that school I felt two inches taller ; I 
thought I was doing a great work. If you had asked me how 
many had been converted I would have said : " Well, we are 
just sowing; the reapers are coming on behind." But some 
how or other we did no reaping. When a boy got to be fifteen 
or sixteen years old he drifted away from us and the world got 
him. Yet I toiled on in that way perfectly satisfied. 

I will tell you what woke me up. I had a class in that 
school, and there wasn't a single person that could manage it, 
and it was a class of girls. It seemed as if they were born 



480 



THE DYING TEACHER. 



laughing and giggling. I finally gave them over to a teacher, 
and told him if he would just keep them quiet that would 
satisfy me. One Sunday he was absent and I took the class, 
but they laughed in my face, and I had a great mind to open 
the door and just order them all out. That week the teacher 
came into the store to see me. I noticed as he came in that he 
was very pale and weak, and as he took a seat on a box he said : 

" I have come to bid you good-bye." 

"Why? "I asked. 

" I have had a hemorrhage of the lungs, and the doctor tells 
me I can't live here ; I am going home to my widowed mother 
to die." 

" You are not afraid of death, I hope ? " 

" No, it isn't that." 

" What is the trouble ? " 

" Moody," he said, " I don't know of anyone in this world 
that I ever led to Christ, and none of my Sunday-school class 
is converted ; I can't bear the thought that when I get up 
yonder I shall not meet one that has ever been made better 
because of my life. What shall I say when I come to give an 
account of my stewardship? " 

I began to feel rather awkward myself; what should / say if 
I was called to give an account of my stewardship ? I said : 

" Suppose you go and see them and tell them just how you 
feel? " 

" When I had strength," he said, " I didn't go, and now I 
can't." 

I got a carriage and helped him into it and we started out. 
I don't believe I should be here now if it had not been for that 
day's experience ; God gave me a revelation that day. I drove 
up to the first house and we got out, and he reeled across the 
sidewalk and went into the house. He knew every one of his 
girls by name. He said to this one : 

" Mary, I must leave Chicago ; I can't stay here any longer ; 
but before I leave I want you to become a Christian." 

After he had talked a while, he prayed, and then I prayed. 



THE CLASS WON TO CHRIST. 



481 



When he got tired out I took him home, and the next day I 
took him out again ; and for ten days he labored in that way, 
sometimes alone and sometimes I went with him. We visited 
every member of the class. Do you know, those frivolous girls 
suddenly became very serious. One day he came into the 
store, his face beaming, and said : 

" I have good news to tell you ; the last one of my class has 
yielded her heart to Christ to-day, and I am going home to- 
morrow. I have come to bid you good-bye." 

" You are going to be here to-night, you say ; wouldn't you 
like to meet the class all together before you go? " I said. 

He said he would ; and I sent a message to all the girls. 

That night God kindled a fire in my soul that has never gone 
out. I can't tell you what a night it was ! The dying teacher 
told those girls how God had helped him. After he had talked 
a while and read the Bible, he kneeled down to pray ; he prayed 
for me as superintendent of the school ; after he prayed I 
prayed ; and when I was about to rise, to my surprise one of 
those scholars began to pray, and she, too, prayed for the 
superintendent. Before we rose from our knees every one had 
prayed. It seemed as if heaven and earth came together in 
that room. 

The next day I went back to the store, but, to my great 
amazement, I had lost all ambition for business. Up to that 
hour I had made everything bend to succeeding in business ; 
that was the height of my ambition. That day I couldn't take 
any interest in business ; I felt as if I would like to bid that 
teacher Godspeed. I went down to the railway station to see 
him off. It was a beautiful summer evening, and every dne of 
the class was there. While we stood there we sang a Sunday- 
school hymn : 

" Here we meet to part again, 
But when we meet on Canaan's shore, 
There'll be no parting there." 

There stood the engineer and fireman with tears trickling down 
their faces. When the conductor shouted " All aboard," the 



482 THE LUXURY OF PERSONAL WORK. 

teacher stepped up on the platform, and as the car moved off, 
with his finger pointing heavenward, he said : 

" I will meet you up yonder." 

The work that began then in that school has been going on 
ever since. Sometime afterwards, when I was preaching in 
California, I recognized a lady in the audience, and after the 
service I said to her : 

" Have you ever lost sight of Christ since that dying 
teacher led you into the kingdom? " 

" No," she said. 

" What are you doing for Christ ? " I asked. 

" I have a Sunday-school class of a hundred scholars." 

" Have you ever given up Sunday-school work since that 
time? " 

"No, sir." 

Those scholars scattered over different parts of the Lord's 
kingdom, but not one of them that I ever heard of turned back 
again to the world ; I believe they were all true to God. I 
honestly believe that I should never have given up business if 
it had not been for that experience. 

Life is very sweet to me, but I would rather die to-night 
than to go back to that time when I was only a nominal Chris- 
tian and didn't know the luxury of personal work. I pity the 
man or woman that has never had a taste of this personal work. 
If you haven't had it may God give it to you. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 

The Man Who Fell Among Thieves — The Priest Who Passed Him 
By — John Wesley's Motto — A Cry for Help — Criminal Selfish- 
ness — Driven Out of Town — Too Many Committees — The 
Levite — The Good Intention — "Drawing" Church Members — 
Blaming the Usher — The Chinaman and the Hoodlums — Race 
Prejudice — The Kind-hearted Samaritan — A "Blowing Up " — 
A Year Wasted — Binding Up His Wounds — A Worker in the 
Seven Dials — Gathering in the Outcasts — Giving Time, Money, 
and Personal Effort — The Fiddling Infidel — Paying the Inn- 
Keeper — A Pung Full of Boys — " Hitch On " — Watching for a 
Chance to Ride — " Get Away ! Get Away ! " — The Hopeful 
Mother — A Serious Case of Homesickness — No Comfort in 
Looking at Jackknives — The Beautiful New Cent — Kindness 
Never Forgotten — Lending to the Lord. 

I REMEMBER hearing Dr. Kirk once speak at a convention 
in the West. He opened his address by giving a picture 
of Heaven. I said, " That's the finest thing I ever heard ! " 
But he stopped and said, " My friends, that's not what we are 
here for. We have come to decide what we will do to have 
the world converted." I shall never forget that part of his 
speech. 

I believe, if the truth was known, that every man's life is 
planned by the Almighty, and away back in the councils of 
eternity God laid out work for each one of us. There is no 
man living that can do the work He has laid out for me to do. 
No one can do it but myself. And if our work is not done we 
shall have to answer for it when we stand at God's bar. It 
seems to me that every one of us ought to take this question 
home to our hearts : " Am I doing the work that God meant 
for me to do? " 

Now, you will notice in the parable of the good Samaritan, 

(483) 



484 FALLEN AMONG THIEVES. 

that Christ brings four men to that skeptical lawyer's consider- 
ation. The first was a wounded man who had been stripped by 
thieves ; the next was a priest ; the next was a Levite ; and the 
next was a good Samaritan. It is a good thing to take a good 
look at these four men. The wounded Jew had gone from 
Jerusalem down to Jericho, and misfortune overtook him. 
You will find plenty of such people ; they have fallen among 
thieves, and they need help. The priest came down that way. 
He had probably been officiating at Jerusalem. He was, per- 
haps, in very high standing. If we had him here now we 
should probably give him high-sounding titles, — Rev. Levi, 
D.D., LL.D. Perhaps he said as he saw that poor wounded 
Jew, " Poor fellow, I pity him. If he were in my parish I 
would look after him. But I've not been appointed to look 
after men between Jerusalem and Jericho." 

I once asked a minister to pronounce the benediction, and 
he said he wasn't in his own parish, and he couldn't do it. I 
felt sorry for him. What was the motto the mighty man, John 
Wesley, gave us ? " The World is My Parish." Never stop 
to ask whether the man who needs your help is a Jew or a Gen- 
tile. He is your brother. I have no doubt that priest was full 
of pity in his head, but empty of pity in his heart. He saw that 
wounded man lying there suffering and dying, and he spoke 
no word to him. There might have been a spring near, but 
he never gave him a drop of water, and he " passed by on the 
other side." " Let him die; he is nothing to me." 

A few years ago there was a man who fell through the ice 
into the water. It was a bitter cold night in winter, and a man 
living on the shore near by heard the drowning man cry 
" Help ! Help ! " And the man in the house said, " I don't 
want to be disturbed this cold night," and he left the poor man 
to his fate. The next day the body of the drowned man was 
found. When it was known that the man on the shore had 
done such a mean, contemptible thing his neighbors hounded 
him out of town. 

P>ut we hear the cry of the poor and lost all around us, lost 



PASSING BY— LOOKING ON. 



485 



for time and for eternity, and we " pass by on the other side." 

" He doesn't belong to my parish ! " 

" I'm a Methodist, and I look after the Methodists ! " 

" He belongs to the Baptists. I look after them ! " 

" He is a Congregationalist ; let the Congregationalists look 
out for him ! " 

I say, if a man is in trouble, HELP him ! 

The priest passed on. Perhaps he was going to dedicate 
a synagogue in Jericho, and he must hasten down there to 
attend to his " ecclesiastical " duties. I have been told that 
" we have so many committees and divisions in our churches 
that we haven't time to do the Lord's work." 

The Levite came after him. He would be a deacon in New 
England, or a church warden. He was of a different turn of 
mind. He looked at the wounded Jew, and he, too, " passed by 
on the other side." But he stopped long enough to " look " 
at him. I don't know but he put his hands in his pocket, and 
said : 

" I pity that man. I know him. He lives on a back street 
and has a wife and ten children. Won't it be a dark day for 
them when he is taken away? Perhaps he has been wont to 
put some money into the treasury. I will go down to Jericho 
and see if I can get somebody to help. I will call it ' The 
Jerusalem and Jericho Committee to look after wounded Jews 
between Jerusalem and Jericho ' ; and I will give five dollars 
as a salve to my conscience. I will see if I can't get some of 
the leading men of the Jericho synagogue to appoint more 
soldiers to guard that road. It is a burning shame that a man 
can't go down from Jerusalem to Jericho without falling among 
thieves." Such things are going on in our cities all the time. 
Men are dying for want of our help. 

I am told that I can find ten thousand priests and Levites 
easier that one good Samaritan. They are mighty scarce. 
How many times the question is asked, " How shall we get a 
'drawing' minister?" What we want is "drawing church- 
members." Put a rich man at the end of a pew, and if a work- 



486 



THE OLD PARTY SPIRIT. 



ing man is ushered in to sit beside him the pew-owner will very 
likely say to the usher at the first opportunity : 

" What did you put that man in my pew for ? I pay fifty 
dollars a year for that pew." 

The pew has probably been half empty for five years, but 
the usher gets a blowing up for seating a poor man in it. Talk 
about " difficulties " and " obstacles." No obstacles in God's 
way. " Go and do likewise," and you will " reach the working 
men." There's no trouble. Take a man that's down and help 
him up, and it is worth hundreds of sermons. 

I was in California some years ago, and a Chinaman was 
walking up the street quietly, when one of the hoodlums took 
him by his cue and pulled him down on the sidewalk and 
threatened to kill him. I said : 

" That man has never done you any harm. What do you 
want to kill him for? " 

A gentleman told me I came near being killed myself for 
saying so. The hoodlum replied : 

" That dog ain't got no soul." 

Samaritans to the orthodox Jews were about the same. We 
know that the Samaritan was the only man under Heaven that 
could not become a proselyte to the Jewish faith. The Jews 
would not buy or sell to a Samaritan. Now, the Jew must 
have a pretty poor opinion of a man if he won't sell to him, 
when there is a possibility of making anything out of him. 

I recently heard an incident related illustrating this preju- 
dice. A colored woman got into a street car and sat down near 
an Irish woman. The Irish woman drew up her skirts and 
edged along ; and by and by a Chinaman got in and sat down 
near the colored woman, and she drew up her skirts and edged 
along. It's easy enough to talk about the Jews not liking the 
Samaritans, but there's some of that feeling left yet. Once in a 
while, when we are trying to get a man on the right road, and 
we ask some one to help us, he says, " I am a Roman Catholic." 
" Well," we say, " we are Protestants." So we give no assist- 
ance to each other. The party spirit of old has not all 



UNITY IN HELPFULNESS. 



487 



vanished yet. The Protestants will have nothing to do with 
the Catholics ; the Jews will have nothing to do with the Gen- 
tiles. And there was a time — but, thank God, we are getting 
over it — when a Methodist wouldn't touch a Baptist, or a 
Presbyterian a Congregationalist ; and if we saw a Methodist 
taking a man out of a ditch, a Baptist would say, " Well, what 
are you going to do with him ? " " Take him to a Methodist 
church.'' " Well, I'll have nothing to do with him." A great 
deal of this has gone by, and the time is coming when, if we 
are trying to help a man out of the ditch, and others see us 
tugging at him, and we are so weak that we cannot get him 
out, they will help him, too. And that is what Christ wants. 
Do you suppose when you go to Heaven that the Lord will ask 
whether you came from Boston or New York, whether you are 
a Jew, Gentile, Catholic, or Protestant ? Let's get above these 
things. 

I can see that good Samaritan coming along, with eyes 
bright, and a sunny face. He hears the sufferer groan, and 
dismounts at once and goes into the bush, and there the 
wounded Jew lies dying. And the Samaritan says, " I see. 
He is a son of Abraham." If he had been like some I know he 
would have said : 

" I'll give that fellow a lecture. I'll give him a piece of my 
mind. I'll help him by-and-by, but I'll give him a draught of 
vinegar first, and I will put oil in his wounds afterward. You 
have called us Samaritans. I'll help you, but I want you to 
understand that you deserve just what you've got." 

A gentleman in Chicago often used to give me a good 
" blowing up," but he always gave me a check afterwards, but 
that blowing up always came first. Some people carry a bottle 
of vinegar around with them, and then always wonder why 
people are not " drawn towards them." It is a wonder, isn't 
it? That good Samaritan didn't bring out the vinegar, and 
he didn't stop to ask " Who are you ? " " Where did you come 
from?" "Where are you going?" But he said to himself, 
'' The man is dying. He needs help. I must attend to his 



LIVING SERMONS. 

needs, and get him up from here." He didn't stop to discuss 
his faults and criticise him. He didn't read a manuscript forty 
minutes long. There is a class of men who think the world is 
going to be lifted up by manuscripts. Brethren, we want some- 
thing besides written sermons. We want a few sermons with 
hands and feet. That poor fellow didn't care to hear an essay 
just then. The Samaritan might have pulled out a manuscript 
and said, " Now I will tell you just when sin came into the 
world." " But," the poor fellow would have said, " I am dying. 
Help me! " " Oh, but first let me tell you the origin of sin." 

I once said to a young man : 

" Go out and work for God. You have health and strength. 
Go and expound the word of God up and down the land." 

" Well," he said, " I would like to do it, but I haven't had 
much encouragement in our university this year. We have 
been the whole year trying to find out who wrote the Penta- 
teuch." 

Think of a class that spent a whole college year trying to 
find out who wrote the Pentateuch ! 

What did that poor wounded Jew want then? He wanted 
" oil." It is a good thing to carry oil with you, and if you 
find a wounded man pour in the oil. He did not want a 
lecture. He wanted sympathy, and something to keep him 
from dying. The hot rays of the sun were pouring in upon his 
wounds, and he wanted them bound up. I don't know where 
the good Samaritan got his bandages. Men don't usually 
carry bandages with them. I think he must have torn up some 
of his garments. He took more prejudice out of that Jew in 
thirty minutes than was ever taken out of one before in all the 
history of the world. Help the fellow who is down, and he will 
believe that you have got a religion that is worth having. 

When I was in London I became acquainted with one of 
the most remarkable men I ever met. He was a young man 
brought up in the best society. His father moved in what 
the world calls the upper circle. This young man was 
well acquainted with the Royal family, but when he was con- 



RESCUE WORK IN LONDON. 



489 



verted he went down into the Seven Dials, a locality full of dark 
alleys and the lowest dens of infamy. He would go out on 
those dark narrow streets until midnight, and oftentimes stay 
until two and three o'clock in the morning. There he met 
ragged boys without homes, lying around on boxes, barrels, 
and stairways, and he would gather them together, give them 
a supper, good shelter, and a bed, and stay there and sleep with 
them. He left his beautiful mansion, and seven nights in a 
week he went down to what I might call the very borders of 
hell, for it seemed to me the darkest sight I ever saw. He went 
not only one or two weeks, but for eight or nine years, spending 
every night among the most abandoned people, trying to bring 
them up out of their deep degradation. In 1872 he had eighty- 
five boys in Canada, all of whom had been converted, and they 
were all doing well. When I was in London the last time it 
was my privilege to stop at his house. He has since married, 
and his wife told me that he gave five nights out of the week to 
that work at the Seven Dials. He put up a building costing 
about $75,000. Not only did he spend his money, but his time. 
A good many people are willing to help the Lord in a patroniz- 
ing way, by giving a hundred dollars or so to the church, and 
they are perfectly willing to let others do the work ; but this 
man was willing to go right down among the lowest of the low 
to get hold of them ; and I don't know a man so blessed as he. 

I had another friend in London who went into one of these 
" closes " — a court with tenements built all around it — every 
Sunday afternoon to preach. There were two infidels living 
there, and one of them would fiddle and fiddle, and try to drown 
the preacher's voice. But my friend had the John Bull per- 
severance and he held on. By and by the cholera and the 
plague struck that " close," and one of these two infidels was 
stricken down and died. My friend went in and provided for 
the man's wife and children, and the other infidel was the first 
convert he got. His talks and sermons did not win him, but 
his acts of kindness did. T don't believe that there is a man in 
all the world who cannot be reached by kindness. 
30 



49<D "HITCH ON," AND "GET AWAY." 

Let me go back to that good Samaritan. What did he do 
for the poor Jew? He lifted him on his own beast, and he 
" footed " it. He brought him to the inn and said, " I'll pay for 
all he needs." The next morning the Jew was a good deal 
better. Then the good Samaritan said to the inn-keeper, " I 
don't know how much it will cost, but here is fourteen pence. 
If that's not enough I am responsible. I will repay. Don't 
let the man want for anything." Don't you believe that Jew's 
prejudice against the Samaritan disappeared for time and 
eternity? There's not a philosophic skeptic can make you or 
me believe that he was not a good Samaritan. It is a good 
thing to meet a Samaritan, — a good one. 

I was in New England once when the first fall of snow came, 
and the boys were out with their sleds. An old man with a 
dilapidated old pung came along. He looked like Santa Claus, 
and the pung was full of boys " inside and out," as the Irishman 
would say. The boys hung on to the runners, and they tied 
the ropes on until there was a long string of sleds behind. 

" Hitch on, hitch on, boys," said the old man. 

But one little fellow stood off. He could not hitch on. He 
looked as if he had lost all his friends. Just then he saw an- 
other man with a sleigh who looked like a good Samaritan. I 
shall always remember how the boy watched and watched to 
see if he was truly a good Samaritan. He could not quite tell, 
but finally he hitched on. The man turned round, and 
shouted : 

" Get away ! Get away ! " and he gave him a crack with his 
whip, and the boy began to cry. 

I said to myself, " That's about the way it is in life. Some 
men go through the world and say ' Hitch on, boys, hitch on ! ' 
And others, ' Get away ! Get away ! ' 

I want to tell you of the first good Samaritan I ever met. 
Ah, it brings the tears to my eyes every time I think of it. My 
father died before I can remember. There was a large family 
of us. The little twins came after his death, — nine of us in all. 
He died a bankrupt, and the creditors came in and took every- 



AN ANXIOUS MOTHER. 49! 

thing as far as the law allowed. We had a hard struggle. 
Thank God for my mother ! she never lost hope. She told me 
some years after that she kept bright and sunny all through the 
day and cried herself to sleep at night. We didn't know that, 
or it would have broken our hearts. We didn't know what 
trouble our mother was passing through. Thank God ! He 
gave her a rest in the evening of life. But my brother, a year 
and a half older, had gone to Greenfield, and had done 
" chores," and he was so homesick that he was constantly writ- 
ing for me to come. He wanted me so much that he wrote that 
he would come home for me. I said I wouldn't go. But one 
cold day in November, — I have never liked November since, 
— a day of leaden skies and frozen ground, my brother came 
home, and said he had found a good place for me, and I must 
go down and spend the winter in Greenfield. I said I wouldn't 
go. But as my mother and I sat by the fire, she said : 

" Dwight, I think you will have to go. I don't think I shall 
be able to keep the family together this winter." 

Very little that dear mother had to keep us on. It was a 
dark night for me. But mother's wish was enough. If she 
said I ought to go that settled it. I didn't sleep much that 
night. I cried a great deal. The next morning after break- 
fast I took my little bundle and started. I was about ten years 
old. When we got a mile away from the house we both sat 
down and cried. I thought I should never get back as long 
as I lived. We footed it over the frozen ground thirteen miles. 
I have never been so far from home since. I thought I should 
never get back over those thirteen miles. My brother intro- 
duced me to the old man and his wife with whom I was to live. 
I was to milk the cows, go on errands, and go to school. There 
was not a child there. That afternoon I looked the old man 
all over, and I saw he didn't care for boys. He was kinder than 
I thought he was, but he could not sympathize with a child. 
Afterwards I took a look at his wife, and I thought she was 
crosser than he was. T was homesick. T heard a man say the 
other day that the only home lie cared for was under his hat. I 



492 A PERSONAL REMINISCENCE. 

pity a man if that is his idea of life. I never could get over 
being homesick. So I said to my brother : 

" Brother, I'm going home." 

" What are you going home for? " 

" I'm homesick." 

''You'll get over it if you stick it out." 

" No, I won't. I don't want to get over it. I can't stand it. 
I don't like those people here, anyway." 

" Dwight, come out and take a walk with me," my brother 
said. 

He took me out near the courthouse square, led me to some 
shop windows, and showed me some jackknives. What's the 
use of looking at jackknives if a fellow hasn't any money to 
buy them with? My eyes were full of tears. I didn't care for 
these things. 

" I'm going home," I said. 

" No, it'll be dark," said my brother. 

" Well, I'll start to-morrow morning before daylight. I 
will tell the old man to get some one else to milk his cows." 

All at once my brother, who was looking ahead, brightened 
up, and said : 

" There comes a man that will give you a cent." 

" How do you know ? " 

" W^hy," said he, " he gives a brand-new cent to every new 
boy that comes to town, and he will give you one." 

My tears went away as I saw the old man come tottering 
along the sidewalk, his face all lighted up. He reached me 
just in the nick of time and, looking down, he said : 

" Why, this is a new boy, isn't it? " My brother straight- 
ened up and said : 

" Yes, sir, he is my brother, just come to town." 

And the old man put his trembling hand on my head and 
looked down upon me. He got hold of my heart, and as he 
held my hand he told me that God had an only Son in Heaven, 
and that He loved this world so much He died for it. He went 
on talking about Heaven, and told how the Father loved me, 



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CHEERING WORDS. 495 

and how my father on earth was lifted up, and how I had a 
Saviour up there, and he told me the story of the Cross in about 
five minutes. Then he put his hand in his pocket, and he gave 
me a brand-new cent. I had never seen such a bright and 
beautiful cent before, and I almost thought it was gold. He 
put it in my hand, and I never felt as I did then before or since. 
That act of kindness took the " homesickness " out of me. 
I felt from that hour that I had a friend. I thought that man 
was God, almost. 

I don't know what has become of that cent. I have often 
wished I had kept it ; but I can feel even now the gentle pres- 
sure of those trembling hands on my head. I never walk the 
streets of Greenfield and hear a child crying that I don't in- 
stinctively put my hand in my pocket for a cent. And it gives 
me joy. Oh, when you give to the poor your help, your sym- 
pathy, a loving word, you are " lending to the Lord." Let us 
all be good Samaritans. Let us not pass by on the other side. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 

People Who Pick at the Bible — Critics and Cavillers — Jonah and 
the Whale and Some Other Doubted Stories — The Scotchman's 
Answer to a Modern Philosopher — The Boy Skeptic Who Wanted 
to Argue with Mr. Moody' — • Ministers who Delight in Picking the 
Bible to Pieces — The Only Verse He Could Quote — The Bible 
Judged without Examination — The Minister's Cut Bible — "I'm 
Going to Hold On to the Covers " — Cutting Out what You do 
not Agree With — The Supernatural Things of the Bible — The 
Bible in Three Hundred and Fifty Different Languages — Tele- 
graphing the Entire New Testament to Chicago — Issuing Fifteen 
Hundred Bibles an Hour — Wonderful Spread of the Gospel — 
Wonderful and Interesting Instances of Fulfilled Prophecy — 
People Who Can't Believe the Bible. 

1DO not believe we are qualified to work for God until we 
understand a part of the Bible, at least. I have yet to find 
a successful w r orker, in the pulpit or out, who doubts the 
truth of any portion of the Bible. If a man begins to pick at 
the word of God it don't take him a great while to become an 
unbeliever. I have often said that if I were going to give up 
any portion of the Bible I would give it up altogether. What 
is the use of being five years in doing what you can just as 
well do in five minutes ? If a man or woman begins to pick at 
the Bible it won't take five years to pick it to pieces. I have 
known of ministers who began to criticize the Bible, and it was 
not long before they were out of the pulpit and out of the 
ministry, and had made shipwreck of their faith. If I under- 
stand the Bible, one portion of it comes to me with the same 
authority that any other portion does. Some people say they 
believe in the New Testament, but not in the Old Testament ; 
that there are things in the Old Testament they cannot believe. 

(496) 



BELIEVING AS CHRIST BELIEVED. Agy 

Do you know that the very things people cavil about to-day are 
the things that Christ set His seal to when here upon earth? 
Some say, " I don't believe in Noah and his ark ; I suppose that 
old story was exploded long ago." When I give up that story 
I give up the sermon on the Mount. When a servant gets to 
be above his master he had better go and serve someone else. 
The Saviour believed it : " But as the days of Noe were, so shall 
also the coming of the Son of man be." 

Men say to me : " Mr. Moody, you don't really believe the 
story of Sodom and Gomorrah, do you?" Certainly I do; 
Christ connected that with His revelation : " Likewise also as 
it was in the days of Lot ; they did eat, they drank, they bought, 
they sold, they planted, they builded ; but the same day that 
Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from 
heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the 
day when the Son of man is revealed." 

Men say, " I don't believe the story of Moses lifting up a 
brazen serpent on a pole, and the Israelites being healed when 
they looked at it, do you ? " Yes ; He connected that with His 
own cross : " As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, 
even so must the Son of man be lifted up." 

" But you don't believe that the children of Israel were fed 
in the wilderness for forty years ; that God really sent bread 
out of heaven for them to eat ? " Certainly I do, as much as I 
believe the sixth chapter of John, where Christ says : " Your 
fathers did eat manna in the wilderness." 

" You don't believe that story of the widow of Sarepta and 
the cruise of oil? " Yes, I do; Christ taught it: " But unto 
none ol them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, 
unto a woman that was a widow." 

*' But you don't believe that Naaman went into the Jordan 
and was healed of leprosy ? " Certainly ; Christ believed it and 
referred to Naaman : " And many lepers were in Israel in the 
time of Ehseus the prophet ; and none of them was cleansed, 
saving Naaman the Syrian." 

" But you certainly don't believe in the story of Jonah and 



498 bible stories and bible truths. 

the whale?" : ' Yes, I believe that too." When I give that up 
I am going to give up the doctrine of the resurrection of the 
dead. As you get along in life and perhaps have as many 
friends on the other side of the river as you have on this side, 
you will get about as much comfort out of the story of Jonah 
as any other story in the Bible. May God help us to hold on 
to it ! Jesus connected that story with His own resurrection. 
In Matthew they said thrice, " Show us a sign." And He said 
that the only sign would be the story of Jonah in the whale's 
belly. Christ believed that Jonah went into the whale's belly, 
and are you going to be His disciple and be wiser than He? 
Men say, " It is a physical impossibility for a whale to swallow 
a man." The Bible says, " God prepared a great fish." That 
is enough. If God created a whale, couldn't He create a fish 
large enough to swallow a man ? There is no trouble when you 
bring God in to prepare the fish. God could prepare a fish 
large enough to swallow the whole world — take us all in at 
one swallow. Any trouble there ? I don't see any. The idea 
that God couldn't make a whale with a mouth large enough to 
swallow Jonah ; I never heard of such an absurdity. 

A friend of mine from Scotland was returning home on a 
steamer, and a couple of modern' philosophers stood on the 
deck talking together, and the Scotchman stood right near 
them where he couldn't help hearing what they said. One of 
them said : " You know the Bible has got to go down : it is 
only a question of time when it will be abandoned altogether. 
It can't stand in the light of science." '' Yes," said the other, 
"it has got to go down." Then the other said: "T)id you 
ever hear anything so absurd as the story that Baalam's ass 
spoke? Now, I am a scientific man, and I have taken pains 
to examine the mouth of an ass, and it is so formed that it 
couldn't speak." My Scotch friend stood it just as long as he 
could, and finally said, " Ah, man, you make the ass and I will 
make him speak." The idea that the God who made the ass 
could not make him speak ! And yet we hear such stuff right 
in New England ! 



THE MAN WHO WANTED A NEW BIBLE. ^qq 

A friend once said to me : 

" Mr. Moody, I wish you would go and talk to that young 
man." He was a mere boy, and when I began to taik with 
him he wanted to have an argument, but I wouldn't argue with 
him. I said : 

" You are a skeptic? " 

" Yes, sir, I am." 

" How long have you been a skeptic? " 

" A number of years." 

" Now," I said, " may I ask you how old you are? " 

" Fourteen." 

" Would you tell me what a skeptic is ? " 

To save his life he couldn't tell ; he had heard some infidels 
talk about being skeptics, and he thought he would be one. 
Most men who are talking against the Bible don't know any 
more about it than that boy did about skepticism. They hear 
some of the sentiments of infidels, and they go about reporting 
them, and don't know a thing about it. 

A man in Montreal was once talking to me, and said : 

" The fact is, Mr. Moody, we have got to have a new .Bible. 
This old Bible was well enough for the dark ages, but it won't 
do for the nineteenth century." 

"■Well," I said, " before you give up the Bible we have, let 
us see how much you know about it ; which is the first book in 
the Bible, Genesis or Revelation? " 

" Well, I can't tell that." 

He couldn't answer that question, but he had " got to have 
a new Bible." I want to tell you something : The men whom 
you hear talking against the Bible don't look inside of it once 
in six months ; they know nothing about it. I contend that 
there is no book in the wide world that is so misjudged as the 
Bible. 

Some ministers seem to derive a good deal of pleasure in 
going into the pulpit and picking the Bible to pieces. If you 
have such a minister I advise you either to get him out of the 
church or go out yourself. I wouldn't stay in a church that 



500 HOLDING ON TO THE COVERS. 

had a man in the pulpit who picked the Word of God to pieces, 
not by a good deal. I heard of a young man who called on his 
pastor, and said he wanted to show him the minister's Bible. 

" What makes you call it my Bible? " said the minister. - 

"Well," said the young man, "I have sat under your 
preaching for five years, and when you spoke of anything in the 
Bible as not being authentic, I cut it out." 

And he had cut out all of the book of Job, all of Revelations, 
and the Songs of Solomon. About a third of the Bible was 
gone. The minister said : 

" Let me have that Bible." He didn't want his people to 
see the book in that condition. But the man said : 

" Oh, no! I have got the covers and I am going to hold 
on to them." 

If ministers have a right to cut out what they don't like, 
and I have a right to cut out what I don't like, and if everybody 
else should cut out what they don't like, we should have a 
wonderful Bible ! The adulterer reads in the Bible that no 
adulterer shall enter the kingdom of heaven, and he says, " Cut 
it out ! " The drunkard reads that no drunkard shall enter the 
kingdom of heaven, and he says, " I don't want that," and he 
cuts it out. The thief reads, " Thou shalt not steal," and he 
says, " I don't want that," and he cuts it out. 

My dear friends, take the whole book, not a part of it ! Is 
all of it inspired ? No, I don't say that all of it is inspired. All 
Scripture is given by inspiration, but it is not all inspired. 
When the devil told a lie in Eden, he wasn't inspired to tell a 
lie, but some one w r as inspired to write about it. When the 
devil told the lie about Job he wasn't inspired to speak, but 
some one was inspired to record it. When Ahab got those four 
hundred prophets together to speak their prophecy, they were 
not inspired to speak a lie, but somebody was inspired to write 
about it. 

Another class says, " Well, Mr. Moody, you know I be- 
lieve all that corresponds with reason : I believe the natural 
things of the Bible, but I don't believe the supernatural things." 



A SUPERNATURAL RECORD. q OI 

There isn't any part of the Bible that doesn't teach supernatural 
things. If God is'a supernatural being He must have a super- 
natural book to tell about Himself. We read in Genesis that 
God talked with Abraham. Now, if that did not take place, 
then the man who wrote Genesis knew that he was writing a 
lie, and out goes Genesis. Take Exodus, and there we find 
the story of the ten plagues, the children of Israel passing 
through the Red Sea, water flowing out of a rock ; and if those 
things did not take place, one after another, the man who wrote 
Exodus knew that he was writing a lie. Read Numbers, and 
there is Moses making a brazen serpent, and putting it up on a 
pole, and the people bitten of fiery serpents look upon it and 
are healed. If that didn't take place then the man that wrote 
Numbers knew that he was writing a deliberate lie, so out goes 
Numbers. You can go through the whole Bible, and you will 
find supernatural things all through it. The last portion of the 
Bible that a man gives up is the four Gospels, and a man that 
does not believe in the supernatural things recorded in them 
has got to give the Bible up altogether. There was hardly a 
day in the life of Christ that He did not do something super- 
natural. Five hundred years before He was born, an angel 
told Daniel that He was to come. An angel told Zacharias 
that he was to be the father of the forerunner of Christ. An 
angel told the Virgin that she was to be the mother of Christ. 
Angels came to the shepherds to announce His coming; the 
Holy Spirit came upon Simeon so that he recognized Him in 
the temple. From the beginning of Christ's ministry, when 
the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove, to 
the time when His resurrection body passed up through the 
clouds into heaven, something supernatural was taking place. 
He spoke to the sea in a tempest, and the sea recognized Him 
and obeyed His voice. He spoke to the barren fig tree, and 
the tree withered away. He spoke to leprosy, and leprosy 
obeyed Him. He spoke to death, and death fled before Him. 
When He died the sun refused to look upon that scene ; this 
old world recognized Him, and the earth reeled and rocked like 



502 



THE NEW VERIFIES THE OLD. 



a drunken man. The earth knew Him. That was super- 
natural. And when He burst asunder the bands of death and 
came out of Joseph's sepulchre that was supernatural. 

The great Welch preacher, Christmas Evans, said " Many 
reformations die with the reformer, but this reformer ever 
liveth to carry on- His reformation." Thank God, he is not 
dead ! I know a good many people are trying to make us 
think that Jesus is in Joseph's sepulchre yet ! They want us 
to throw away the supernatural things of the Bible ! My dear 
friends, if you throw away the supernatural things, you have 
got to throw away the whole Bible. I thank God that our 
Christ is a supernatural Christ, and that the Bible is a super- 
natural Book ; and I thank God that I live in a country where 
it is so free that all men can read it. 

There is another thought I want to call your attention to : 
People say they believe the New Testament, but they do not 
believe the Old. Do you know that there are only eighty-nine 
chapters in the four Gospels, and there are one hundred and 
forty quotations from the Old Testament in them? There are 
sixty-five quotations in Matthew alone from the Old Testa- 
ment. How are you going to believe in the New Testament 
and not believe in the Old ? There are twenty-five quotations 
from the Old Testament in Luke alone ; in the two short epistles 
of Paul to the Corinthians there are sixty-five quotations ; in 
Colossians there are sixteen quotations ; in Hebrews there are 
eighty-five quotations — not just isolated passages, but great 
blocks of quotations ; in Revelations alone, the book upon 
which the skeptics cast so much discredit, there are two hun- 
dred and forty quotations ; and yet, people say, " I believe the 
New Testament, but I won't believe the Old." 

Christ said of the law, " Till heaven and earth pass, one jot 
or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be ful- 
filled." Now, when Christ said that, the Old Testament was 
all they had ; there was no New Testament. Then Christ says : 
" Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not 
pass away." When Christ said that, there were no reporters 



WORDS THAT WILL NEVER DIE. 503 

following Him around to take down every word He said ; there 
were no printing-presses or publishers to bring out volumes 
of His sermons every year. It is said that Spurgeon had 
manuscripts of all the sermons he ever preached in London ; 
but when Christ was on earth, there was no one taking down 
His sermons and putting them away in manuscripts ; and yet 
He says : " Heaven and earth shall .pass away, but My words 
shall not pass away." He was looked down upon by the 
church of that time as the vilest of imposters ; all the religious 
teachers sneered at Him. His followers were only a few de- 
spised women of Galilee, and a few unlettered fishermen for 
disciples. I can imagine a modern free-thinker standing by 
and hearing that remark, and saying, with a scornful curl of his 
lip : " Hear the Jewish peasant talk ! Did you ever hear such 
conceit? ' Heaven and earth shall pass away, but His words 
shall not pass away.' " 

My friends, nearly nineteen hundred years have passed 
away since those words were spoken, but have His words 
passed away? They have been put into three hundred and 
fifty different languages, and they have gone to the farthest 
corners of the earth ! There is not a nation on the globe to 
which missionaries have not carried the Word of God, and they 
have made the greatest sacrifices and gone through the severest 
hardships in order that they might do so. Suppose that when 
Christ taught on earth, some prophet had prophesied that a 
continent would be found sixteen hundred years after Jesus 
Christ left this world, and that somebody would take the 
lightning and flash His words right across that continent, 
would anybody have believed it ? And yet that has been done 
in your day and mine. When the revised version of the New 
Testament was published an enterprising concern set ninety 
operators at work on private wires and telegraphed the whole 
New Testament from New York to a Chicago newspaper, and 
it all appeared in the paper the next morning; and natives and 
foreigners, Christians and infidels, were reading it. This 
happened nearly nineteen hundred years after Christ left the 



504 



INCREASING DEMAND FOR BIBLES. 



world, and yet we are saying that the Word of God is getting 
out of date. What you and I want is to know how to handle it. 
Do you know that the sun shines to-day on more Bibles 
than it has ever shone on before. I was in New York a little 
while ago, and an editor of one of the leading daily papers 
there wanted to know if there was any demand for Bibles now- 
a-days (1899). He said the people had given up the Bible and 
gone to reading newspapers. Well, there have been more 
Bibles sold in the last three years than at any other time. There 
never has been such a demand for Bibles. Bibles that I used 
to pay eight and nine dollars for can now be bought for four 
and five, and you can buy a good one for seventy cents. I don't 
know how they do it, but they do. Do you know that the 
American Bible Society and the British and Foreign Bible So- 
ciety issue 1,500 Bibles every hour? Thank God, the Bibles 
are not going out ; they are just coming in ! More Bibles have 
been printed in the last few years than in the past 1800 years. 
" Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not 
pass away." Are His words passing away? No, and thank 
God they are not going to pass away. You and I will pass 
away, and the world will pass away, but His words shall live 
and endure.* 



* Mr. Moody's statement that the American and British Bible Societies 
issue "1,500 Bibles every hour," needs explanation. Probably he meant to 
include Bibles and integral books of the Bible circulated (as well as printed) in 
all lands. Including, its issues in foreign lands, the American Bible Society in 
one year (1898-9) put into circulation 1,380,892 "Bibles, and Testaments and 
integral Portions of the Bible," and in the same year the British and Foreign 
Bible Society issued 4,479,439 volumes of Scripture; a total of 5,860,331. How- 
many this is for each hour depends on the number of hours in a year on which 
the computation is made. Probably Mr. Moody would say that he meant busi- 
ness hours. Now. allowing 310 working days a year, of eight hours each, we 
have 2,480 hours, thus giving on this basis a total output of about 2,363 volumes 
for each working hour; or nearly 670 for each of the twenty-four hours of the 
day throughout the entire year, including Sundays and holidays. These 
figures show the annual output of Bible societies alone. In addition to them 
are many large publishing houses in the United States and England whose 
annual sales of Bibles aggregate hundreds of thousands, so that the actual 
number of Bibles, and integral books of the Bible, sold each year, is much 
greater than the figures above quoted. 

It is stated on unquestioned authority that the Bible Societies alone have 



FULFILLED PROPHECIES. 505 

I say, take the whole Bible. A large part of the Bible was 
written by prophets, but you seldom hear a sermon on proph- 
ecy, fulfilled or unfulfilled. Do you know that there are 
over two hundred prophecies that have been remarkably and 
literally fulfilled in regard to Jesus Christ ? There was nothing 
that happened to Jesus Christ when He was here on this earth 
that was not prophesied of Him. We read in the second 
chapter of Luke that Joseph and Mary went up to Bethlehem 
to be taxed. When Augustus Csesar sent out his decree that 
all the world should be taxed, that decree brought the parents 
of the child Jesus up to Bethlehem, where it had been prophe- 
sied that He should be born. It was prophesied that He should 
be spit upon. Did they not spit upon Him ? Isaiah said that 
they should smite Him. Did they not smite Him? Take 
those two hundred prophecies, and look them over carefully, 
and you will find that every one of them has been literally ful- 
filled. Yet, people say they can't believe the Bible ! 

There are a great many prophecies in the Old Testament 
that history proves to have been literally fulfilled ; for instance, 
the prophecies concerning Ninevah, Babylon, Egypt, and Jeru- 
salem. Infidels may talk as much as they like, but I don't 
know of any portion of Scripture that will stop their mouths 
as quickly as fulfilled prophecy. When I was a boy I was 
taught to believe that all the land west of the Mississippi River 
was a vast and barren desert of sand. But, later, when they 
had taken a hundred millions of dollars in silver out of that 
desert, people began to rub their eyes and wake up to the fact 
that the land was worth something ; and that territory was 
found to be, at that time, the richest in this country. There are 
some portions of the Bible that have never been explored, yet 
there is some of the purest gold of heaven there. If you study 
the Bible you will find it the most interesting book in all the 
world. 

distributed, since 1804, in round figures, the enormous number of 280,000,000 
of Bibles, Testaments, and Portions ; while ten years ago the estimate was 
214,000,000. — [Ed. 



506 ON THE SITE OF BABYLON. 

Here are a few passages about those great cities that were 
flourishing at the time the prophets prophesied : 

Isaiah 13. 19: "And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty 
of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom 
and Gomorrah. 

" It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from 
generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; 
neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. 

" But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall 
be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall 
dance there. 

" And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate 
houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to 
come, and her days shall not be prolonged." 

Now, mark the fulfillment. A friend going through the 
valley of Euphrates with a dragoman tried to induce him to 
pitch his tent near Babylon, but he couldn't get that dragoman 
to pitch his tent anywhere near the ruins. The prophet said 
that Arabs wouldn't pitch their tent there ; no shepherd would 
dwell there. The prophecy has been literally carried out, as 
you will find to-day in traveling through that country. 

Nahum 3. 6-j: "And I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and 
make thee vile, and will set thee as a gazingstock. 

" And it shall come to pass, that all they that look upon thee shall 
flee from thee, and say, Nineveh is laid waste: who will bemoan her? 
whence shall I seek comforters for thee? " 

For 2,500 years Nineveh was buried, covered up. Now, 
we have gone down into the ruins and are digging up the re- 
mains of that old city and bringing them to Constantinople and 
Paris and London, and people from all parts of the world gaze 
at these fragments of the ruins of Nineveh. " I will make 
thee a gazingstock of nations." That prophecy has been 
literally fulfilled, and yet it was uttered that Nineveh was a 
great and mighty city. 

A gentleman who went around the world a few years ago 
told me that when he came to the place where old Tyre used to 
stand, he took out his Bible and turned to Ezekiel 26. 3. As 
he stood among the ruins that night on the very spot where the 
citv once stood, he read : 



WHEAT GROWING ON MOUNT ZION. 



507 



"Therefore saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, 

Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come np against thee, as the 
sea causeth his waves to come up. 

" And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her 
towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top 
of a rock. 

" It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of 
the sea: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God: and it shall become 
a spoil to the nations." 

He said the sun was going down, and the fishermen were 
bringing their nets up out of the sea and spreading them on the 
bare rock where once stood that great city, and the prophecy 
was literally fulfilled. 

Take the prophecy concerning Jerusalem, in the nineteenth 
chapter of Luke : 

" And when He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over 
it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the 
things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine 
eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast 
a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every 
side." 

Didn't Titus do that? Didn't the Roman Emperor do that 
very thing? 

" And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within 
thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another." 

I do not know when I was ever more impressed than when 

1 was in Jerusalem, as I recalled the prophecy, " Thus saith the 
Lord, I will plow Zion like a field." I plucked the wheat right, 
there on Mount Zion ; it had been plowed and sowed just as it 
was prophesied that it would be plowed hundreds of years 
before. 

As I went through Egypt I saw every day the fulfillment of 
prophecy : 

Ezekiel 29. 15: " It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither 
shall it exalt itself any more above the nations: for I will diminish 
them, that they shall no more rule over the nations." 

That was prophesied when Egypt was a great and mighty 
nation. Is there a baser nation on the face of the earth to-day ? 
31 



508 



THE WORTH OF A BIBLE PROMISE. 



It has been trying to get up in your day and mine; but the 
moment it tries to lift its head up, all the nations jump upon it 
to keep it down. 

Yet, some people say they can't believe the Bible ! That is 
because they don't know anything about it, they do not study it. 

It is easy for some to laugh at the Bible ; but the hour is 
coming when one promise in that old Book will be worth more 
than ten thousand worlds like this. It is easy for some to 
sneer at it, but the hour is coming when they will need it. In 
prosperity and health it is easy to laugh and sneer, and get 
infidels to scoff at God ; but the hour is coming, and that 
quickly, when everyone will want a Saviour. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE BIBLE AND HOW TO STUDY IT 

Different Ways of Studying the Bible — Digging Deep for Heavenly 
Truths — An Infidel's Challenge to Mr. Moody — Using a Con- 
cordance — The Man Who Wanted a Book on Assurance — Study- 
ing the Bible with a Telescope — Characteristics of the Gospels — 
How Mr. Moody Held the Attention of the Northfield Students — 
Studying the Bible with a Microscope — A Real and an Artificial 
Bee — Preachers with Flippant Tongues — Mr. Moody's Inter- 
leaved Bible — Marking the Bible — Mr. Moody's Recollections 
of the Family Bible — Looking to See when Dwight was Born — 
Mr. Moody's Embarrassment in a Boston Sunday-school Class — 
" Greeney From the Country" — The Importance of Knowing 
How to Handle the Bible. 

IT IS very difficult for one person to tell others how to 
study, or how to use their minds, for there are no two 
minds that work exactly in the same groove. God made 
•great variety in the human race; no two persons look exactly 
alike. You very often hear people say of twins, " Those two 
boys look as near alike as two peas; " but the mother knows 
them. It is a good thing to have variety in this world. I am 
glad that there is no other man in the world like me; I don't 
want to see another one like me. You can make up your 
mind that there is no other person just like you. 

I will give some hints on the study of the Bible which per- 
haps will be helpful to you. I consider it a -great calamity that 
anyone who has been a child of God a great many years can- 
not get some help from that book for himself. When my 
youngest boy was able to carry his spoon to his mouth without 
spilling" the contents the other children clapped their hands and 
shouted, " Look, papa, Paul can feed himself." T think it is 

(509) 



5io 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 



a great pity if a child of God is not able to feed himself. I 
know people forty years old who never get anything out of the 
Bible except what they get on Sunday. If the minister gives 
them geology, and botany, and metaphysics, they have to go 
hungry; but if he gives them the Word of God they are fed. 
What we want is to know how to study the Word of God and 
feed ourselves. 

Now there are different ways of studying the Bible. I re- 
ceived from George Midler the idea of taking one book of the 
Bible at a time; I found that plan was very helpful to me. If 
I hadn't much time I would take a short Epistle, or one of the 
minor prophets, and read it at one sitting. 

Another good way is to take one of the longer books; take 
Isaiah, or Jeremiah, and read it through. If my wife wrote me 
a letter eight pages long and I should read one page a day I 
should forget what was on the first page before I got to the 
eighth. I sometimes think it is a calamity that the books of 
the Bible have been divided up into chapters and verses. 
People read a chapter and they think that is the end of the 
subject, when in reality they have just touched upon it; it may 
be a week before you come back to reading on that subject 
again, and by that time you have forgotten what you read be- 
fore. I remember when I was a boy and used to hoe corn I 
did it so poorly that I had to put a stick in the ground to tell 
where I left off one day, so that I wouldn't go over the same 
ground the next day. 

I've traveled around a good deal, and many times have 
stopped where they had family worship. The head of the 
house would take down the Bible, and there would always be 
a mark in it. But if there was more than one mark, or if the 
mark had got changed, he wouldn't know where to read, and 
he would say to his wife, " Didn't we read this chapter yester- 
day?" And she wouldn't know, and so he would read the 
same chapter he had read the previous morning. A good 
many people don't know where they leave off unless they put 
a mark in the place where they read the Bible last; and then 



KEYS AND TYPES. 



511 



they wonder why it is they don't get hold of the Bible, ■ — • why 
they don't understand it. I don't believe they will ever under- 
stand the Bible in reading it that way. We have got to dig in 
order to reach these heavenly truths — ■ not dig a little here 
and a little there, but keep right on digging in one place until 
we find the truth. If people make up their minds that they are 
going to get interested in Bible truths, they are going to dig 
away until they find them. 

Each book has a key, and you want to find the key to help 
in its study. If you take up a modern book you will often 
find at the beginning a preface which gives you the key to the 
book. There are only sixty-six books in the Bible, and it 
won't take long to get sixty-six keys. Take Genesis; that is 
the seed-plant of the whole Bible; you will find nearly every- 
thing in the Bible foreshadowed in the book of Genesis. Then 
take Exodus; that is the book of redemption; then Leviticus, 
the book of sacrifices; then Numbers, the book of wanderings; 
then Deuteronomy, the book of directions for the conduct of 
the children of Israel after they get into the promised land. 
Christ quotes more from that than from any other book, and 
that is the reason why the devil attacks it so much at the 
present time. 

Then take up Bible characters as types of Christ, and see 
if you can find any likeness in any of them to Christ Himself. 
Abel was a type of Christ; Enoch, Abraham, and Isaac are 
types of Christ. Perhaps one of the best types was Joseph. 
He was hated by his own brethren ; so was Christ. He was 
stripped of his raiment; he was sold for twenty pieces of silver; 
he was betrayed and misjudged; cast into a pit and into prison. 
Did not Christ's enemies treat Him much the same? At God's 
appointed time Joseph was brought out of prison and made 
governor over all Egypt. Did not God take Christ out of the 
sepulchre and place Him on the throne of Heaven? 

A good way to study the Bible is to take it up topically. I 
think I have received more help in that way than any other. 
There is a book that I think every Christian ought to have, 



C I2 STUDYING THE BIBLE BY TOPICS. 

and that is a Concordance. Perhaps all teachers and ministers 
have them ; but I tell you everyone ought to have certain 
books. If you can't have a whole library you can at least 
have a few books that will be great helps. I remember, in 
Boston, an infidel once picked me up on a quotation T had 
made from the Bible. He said it wasn't in the Bible, and he 
handed me a Bible and asked me to find it. He might just as 
well have asked me to hunt for a needle in a haymow ; I 
couldn't find it. Often the question comes up if such-and-such 
a passage is in the Bible, and you may hunt hours without find- 
ing it; but if you have a Concordance you can find it in three 
minutes. 

Suppose, for instance, you look up every passage in the 
Bible on Assurance, and study the subject until you have 
mastered it. You get the whole drift of the subject and it 
will go with you all through life; and twenty, thirty, or forty 
years hence it will be a feast to you. A man once said to me: 

" Can you recommend a book on Assurance? " 

" Yes. There is a very fine one on Assurance, written by 
a man named John." 

" An Englishman? " 

" Xo. Son of Zebedee." 

" Where can I get it? " 

" At any bookstore." 

"What shall I call for?" 

" It is in the Bible, bound up with some other works. It 
is better than all the infidel books ever published. You had 
better read and study it." 

If a person will study that" epistle a few weeks he will find 
out whether he is in the kingdom of God or not. 

Then take up the doctrine of the Atonement and see what 
the Bible has to say about it. The whole Bible teaches the 
doctrine of Atonement. I remember at one time speaking on 
Heaven, and a lady came to me and said, " Mr. Moody, I never 
knew there was so much in the Bible about Heaven." 1 had 
talked for half an hour about Heaven, and she thought I had 



TELESCOPIC STUDY OF THE BIBLE. r^ 

told all there was in the Bible about it. You can spend a 
whole month on Heaven, and you won't exhaust the subject. 

I remember giving some time to the study of the subject of 
Grace. I don't know how long I was on that subject, but I 
got so full of it that I had to go out and talk about it. You 
know that when a vessel is full there must be an outlet. So I 
went out on the street and spoke to the first man that came 
along, and asked him if he knew anything about the Grace of 
God. I suppose he thought I was crazy. If you will study 
in this way you will get so full of these subjects that it will not 
be hard to take up personal work in the kingdom of God; be- 
cause when you get your very soul on fire you can't help 
working for Him. 

Take up some of these grand doctrines and study them for 
vourselves. I once thought I could turn Chicago upside down 
if I could only get faith, and so I used to pray for faith. I had 
an idea that it was going to come right down from heaven and 
strike me like lightning, and I should jump right up from my 
knees full of it; but it didn't come. Then I read in the tenth 
chapter of Romans that " Faith cometh by hearing, and hear- 
ing by the word of God," and it came to me like a revelation 
from heaven. Ever since I began to study the Bible my faith 
has been growing. You can't get acquainted with these 
promises and feed on them without having your faith grow 
stronger. 

Another good way to study the Bible is to study it with a 
telescope. What I mean by studying it with a telescope is to 
get the drift of the whole book. Take the book of Matthew, 
and you have a whole lecture. If you are going to stop to take 
account of the essential points of the book there are five re- 
markable sermons in it. Matthew was a sort of short-hand 
reporter, and he reported the sermons more fully than the rest. 
Get those five sermons in the Book of Matthew and you have 
a pretty good idea of the whole book. 

Then take Mark, and you will find that there isn't a long 
sermon in it. It is supposed to be written for the Romans, 



5 14 FOUR DIFFERENT STANDPOINTS. 

who would not have received it if it had been made up of long 
sermons; it is full of pithy points. 

Matthew begins with Abraham and writes to the Jews. 
Mark commences with Malachi's prophecy; Luke begins with 
John the Baptist; while John begins with Christ in the bosom 
of the Father. If I wanted to prove the divinity of Jesus Christ 
I would go to John. • Matthew tells us of the resurrection of 
our Lord, but he does not tell us how He left this earth. Mark 
gives His resurrection and ascension, and Luke also gives His 
resurrection and ascension, and reappearance with the 
promise of the Holy Ghost. In John we have all these, and 
the promise of Llis return. Those four men wrote from four 
different standpoints; get those standpoints and study each 
Gospel from that light, and you will find all the Gospel we 
have in them. 

I have over eleven hundred students at the school in North- 
field. I found it very difficult to open services with morning 
prayer. We had only about fifteen minutes to get and hold 
their attention before they had to go into their classes and 
recite in Latin and Greek. Every mind was on the alert to 
be able to recite, and they would have been tempted to look 
into their books had there not been a kind of unwritten law 
against it. I couldn't get hold of those eleven hundred students 
when their minds were occupied with thoughts of their studies, 
and I hit upon this plan: I said to them one morning, " To- 
morrow morning I am not going to open the Bible, but I want 
you to tell me what is in the first chapter of John." I had to 
go to studying myself; you can't commit to memory when you 
are as old as I am as easily as you can when you are younger. 
We committed to memory the verses that were assigned for 
that morning, and, more than all, it became very interesting 
before we had gone very far. The students committed those 
verses to memory and carried them with them through life. 
W r hen we got into the second chapter they became very much 
interested in the miracle at the marriage in Cana, where the 
mother of Jesus said to the servants, " Whatsoever He saith 



A WONDERFUL GOSPEL. 



515 



unto you, do it." When we got into the third chapter of John 
we had hard work to get out of it. We spent the most time 
on the sixteenth verse, " For God so loved the world, that He 
gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life." In the fourth 
chapter we got around to that well of Sychar. I don't believe 
we ever had a more blessed time in the school, until we got 
into the fifth chapter, where were the witnesses that Christ 
brought to prove that He was divine. The sixth chapter we 
called the "Bread Chapter." The seventh chapter we called 
the " Water Chapter." The eighth chapter we called the 
" Light Chapter." The ninth chapter we called the " Sight 
Chapter." A man may have plenty of light, but he must have 
his eyes open if he wants to see. The tenth chapter we called 
the " Good Shepherd Chapter." The eleventh chapter tells of 
the Shepherd going to find the sheep that had strayed and 
bring it back to the fold. The twelfth chapter gives Christ's 
farewell to the people. The thirteenth chapter teaches humil- 
ity. The fourteenth chapter tells of the mansions in Heaven. 
The fifteenth chapter tells of the True Vine. The sixteenth 
chapter tells of the promise of the Holy Ghost. The seven- 
teenth chapter tells of Christ Jesus in prayer for His disciples. 
The eighteenth chapter tells of His arrest. The nineteenth 
chapter tells of His crucifixion. The twentieth chapter tells of 
His resurrection. In the twenty-first chapter He is with His 
disciples again, then He ascends to the Father. There isn't 
a book that you cannot study with a telescope; that is, take a 
bird's eye view of the whole thing. 

Then study it with a microscope. What I mean by study- 
ing the Bible with a microscope is to take up one word, or one 
thought, and trace it through the whole book. Take the word 
" Walk," as in Ephesians : walk in obedience, walk in love, 
walk worthy of the vocation, walk circumspectly, walk as chil- 
dren of light, walk in good works, walk not as the Gentiles 
walk. Take the " No mores " of Revelation. Take the eight 
" Overcomes " of Revelation ; I could almost shout before I 



S i6 



THE FACE ON THE STONE. 



got through. " He that overcometh shall inherit all things ; 
and I will be his God, and he shall be My son." 

When I was in Boston I went iiito a chromo establishment. 
I wanted to know how the work was done. The proprietor 
showed me a stone several feet square, one of many stones 
used in printing a portrait, from which he took an impression 
on paper ; but when he took the paper off the stone I could see 
no sign of a man's face ; the paper was just tinged with a little 
color. I said I couldn't see any sign of a face there. " Wait 
a little," he said. He took me to another stone, but when the 
paper was lifted I couldn't see any indication of a face. He 
took me to eight, nine, ten stones, and at last I could just see 
the faintest outlines of a portrait. He went on until he got 
up to about the twentieth stone, and I could see the face dis- 
tinctly, but he said it was not perfect yet. Well, he went on 
until he came, I think, to the twenty-eighth stone, and a per- 
fect face appeared, and it looked as if it could speak. If you 
read a chapter of the Bible and don't see anything in it, read it 
a second time, and if you cannot see anything in it read it a 
third time. Dig deep. Read it again and again, and even if 
you have to read it twenty-eight times, do so, and you will see 
the man Christ Jesus, for He is in every page of the Word. 

I honestly believe that the coming minister is going to be a 
man who will explain the Word ; I believe what this nation is 
crying for is expository preachers. I know some ministers 
who only use the Bible as a book to take a text from. They 
will give you metaphysics, and geology, and botany, and as- 
tronomy, and I don't know what else, and then wonder why 
people don't love the Bible. I don't wonder. A man made 
an artificial bee that was so like the real bee that he challenged 
a man to tell the difference. What did the man who was chal- 
lenged do? He dropped a little honey near the bees ; the arti- 
ficial bee went buzzing around, and made a great noise, but 
took no notice of the honey. No life in it ! The real bee went 
for the honey. There are a lot of artificial Christians in these 
davs ; they know nothing about honey ; they talk about the 



A FAMOUS SCOTCH PREACHER. 



517 



honey of the Word, but they know nothing about it, because 
they are artificial. So many of these Christians want an elo- 
quent or bombastic preacher, a man who has great oratorical 
gifts or makes striking gestures ! You hear such people say : 

" I went to hear so-and-so preach ; never heard such a 
Gospel sermon in my life." 

Wasn't an ounce of Gospel in it from beginning to end ! If 
a man has got a flippant tongue, many people think he is just 
wonderful ! What we want is to know what God wants us 
to do. 

Dr. Andrew Bonar wasn't what would be called in this 
country a star preacher, — he had a very weak voice ; but I 
never heard a man who brought such sweet things out of the 
Word of God as he did. When I was in Glasgow I heard a 
great deal about him. His church held about 1,300, and for 
twenty-five years it was full every Sunday of people taking 
notes ; sometimes these notes were sent across the sea to me, 
and I never received one of those outlines that wasn't a feast to 
my soul. It was a common thing when we met one of Dr. 
Bonar's people to find the man carrying a Bible, all ready for 
work. When the Doctor called on his people, he would often 
read one of the Gospels or one of the Epistles, and take time 
to explain the whole thing. The result was that he had a 
church full of theologians. I preached six months in Glasgow, 
and there wasn't a ward in that city where I didn't feel the in- 
fluence of that man. 

Every man and woman ought to have each a Bible for 
themselves. I use my Bible to preach from. It is an inter- 
leaved Bible ; every other page is a blank, and I use it as a note- 
book. If a good thought comes to me I put it down, and if I 
am called upon suddenly to speak on any topic — and I don't 
care what the subject is — I have got something to say. I turn 
the leaves over and see what some one else said on that subject. 
I declare, I have heard men preach and T didn't know what 
they were talking about, and I wondered if they did themselves. 
Like the young couple who got married and went to house- 



5i« 



GOLDEN THOUGHTS. 



keeping, and they agreed to balance the cash every Saturday 
night. One night the husband said : 

" Well, dear, I must go away to-night, and you make up 
the accounts yourself." 

Well, the cash didn't balance, so she charged " G. K. W. 
$2.00," " G. K. W. $2.50," " G. K. W. $3.50," and so on. 
When the husband returned, he said : 

"Who is this G. K. W.?" 

" Well," she said, " I couldn't make the cash come out 
straight, and so I just put down G. K. W. for ' Goodness 
Knows What.' ". 

It is a good thing to direct your thoughts and meditate. 
Take your Bible and just say to God, " Speak to me ; " and 
when you get a good thought it will wake you up and do you 
good. Transmit that thought ; communicate it ; if you get a 
thought that has given you joy, don't keep it, pass it on. I heard 
some time ago of a young man in London who never went 
to bed at night without putting down the best thought that 
had come to him during the clay. 

This idea of recording our best thoughts has been a great 
help to me. I have tried to introduce the plan of treasuring 
up one good thought each day. Every good thought you get 
will help. If you want to get your thoughts full of heavenly 
things, talk and read about them. How could people know 
anything about the Klondike if they didn't read about it. I am 
astonished to see so many Christian people spend so much 
money for tobacco and so little for good books. 

Let me give you some things I have jotted down. I don't 
remember where I got all these things. Here is something : 
" Justification, a change of state, a new standing before God ; 
Repentance, a change of mind, a new mind about God; Regen- 
eration, a change of nature, a new heart from God ; Conversion, 
a change of life, a new life for God ; Adoption, a change of fam- 
ily, a new relationship towards God ; SanctiUcation, a change of 
service, a separation unto God ; Glorification, a change of place, 
a new condition with God." 



QUAINT COMPARISONS. ^g 

Then here is another thing I will give you : " FAITH gets 
the most: HUMILITY keeps the most; LOVE works the most!' 
Take up the Word of God in the morning and get a thought 
like that and it will help you all through the day. 

I want to tell you how I was blessed a few years ago, upon 
hearing a discourse upon the thirtieth chapter of Proverbs. 
The speaker said the children of God were like four things. 
The first thing was, " The ants are a people not strong," and 
he went on to compare the children of God to ants. They 
pay no attention to the things of the present, but go on steadily 
preparing for the future. 

The next thing he compared them to was conies. " The 
conies are but a feeble folk." " Well," said I, " I wouldn't 
care to be like a coney." But he went on to say that they built 
upon a rock. The children of God were very weak, but they 
laid their foundation upon a rock. " Well," said I, " I will be 
like a coney, and build my hopes upon a rock." Like the Irish- 
man, who said he trembled himself, but the rock upon which 
his house was built never did. 

The next thing the speaker compared them to was locusts. 
I didn't think much of locusts, and I thought I wouldn't care 
about being like one. But he went on to read : " The locusts 
have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands." There 
were the Congregationalist, the Presbyterian, the Baptist, and 
the Methodist bands going forth without a king ; but by and by 
our King will come back again, and these bands will fly to Him. 
" Well, I will be like a locust ; my King's away," I thought. 

He next compared them to spiders. I didn't like that at all ; 
but he said if we went into a gilded palace filled with luxury, 
we might see a spider holding on to something, oblivious to 
all the luxury below. It was laying hold of the things above. 
" Well," said I, " I will be like a spider." 

I heard this a good many years ago, and I just put the 
speaker's name to it, and it makes the sermon. But take your 
Bibles and mark them. Don't think of wearing them out. It 
is a rare thing to find a man wearing his Bible out now-a-days. 



5 2 ° 



THE FAMILY BIBLE. 



Sunday-school teachers ought to carry the whole Bible 
into their classes. Twenty-five years ago we compassed sea 
and land to get up question-books, and now you will find a 
good many Sunday-schools that never have a Bible in them. 
I heard of a class that wanted to refer to the Bible to settle a 
disputed question, and they went into the church and looked 
in all the pews without finding one, and finally they had to get 
the pulpit Bible and carry it into the Bible-class to decide the 
point. I do not object to " lesson helps," they are all right in 
their place ; but when you go into the Bible-class, take the whole 
Bible along with you. I was brought up on one of these ques- 
tion-books. I didn't have a Bible at all. We had a family 
Bible that mother used to keep in the spare room because she 
was afraid we would tear it, and once in a great while we were 
allowed to look into it. I used to look and see when Dwight 
was born. I saw these titles at the head of some of the pages, 
" Births," " Marriages," " Deaths." I always turned to " Mar- 
riages " first, for that showed when father and mother were 
married ; and then I would turn to " Births " to see when my 
oldest brother and sister were born ; but what used to make my 
eyes sparkle was to get down to where the record showed when 
Dwight was born. That is all I saw of the Bible. Do you 
know why so many young men hang around our Sunday- 
schools and don't want to go into a Bible-class? They don't 
want to expose their ignorance of the Bible. I went to Boston 
when I was seventeen. I had scarcely had a Bible in my hand. 
I was assigned to a Bible-class with some young students from 
Harvard College. I went in there as big as life ! I tell you 
what, you think you know about everything when you are 
about seventeen ; you know more than your father, your grand- 
father, and all your relations ! Well, they said the lesson was 
in John, and they handed me a Bible. What did I know about 
John ? I thought it must be in the minor prophets. Those 
Harvard students began to nudge one another and whisper, 
" Greeny from the country." T said to myself, " What a fool 
I am to be caught in this scrape." I would have gone out very 



THE BIBLE IN THE PEW. r 2 \ 

quickly if I could have done so without being noticed. The 
teacher saw my embarrassment and handed me his Bible, 
opened to the place, and I. stuck my thumb on it so I shouldn't 
lose it. I had been to Sunday-school ever since I was a little 
boy, but I didn't have a Bible and didn't know how to handle 
one. 

Take a person who has never used a Bible, and put it into 
his hand and tell him that it will show him the way to heaven, 
and you might almost as well put a dictionary or Blackstone's 
commentaries in his hand. It is very important that our chil- 
dren should know how to use the Bible. Thank God i we live 
in a land where the Bible is sold so cheap that almost every- 
body can buy one, and if you can't buy, the Bible Society will 
give you one. 

It is a good thing to see a Bible in each pew in church so 
that when the minister reads, the people can read with him ; the 
whole congregation will follow the minister right along, and 
the result is that a child ten years old will know better how to 
use a Bible than the young man who goes to college, if he hasn't 
been in a Bible-class where they use the whole Bible. 

If I had my life to live over again I would spend not less 
than half an hour every day in studying the Bible all alone. I 
have yet to find the first man who knows the Bible through. 
I have yet to find a man full of the Holy Ghost and full of the 
spirit of the Bible of whom God did not make use. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE STORY OF THE DELUGE — TO FATHERS AND 
MOTHERS. 

An Awful Communication — Noah Considered a Lunatic — Jeered 
at by His Neighbors — The Man Who Claimed that Force and 
Matter Work Together — Rocks Made of Sand, and Sand Made 
of Rocks — " Noah and His Folly " — Sending Reporters to 
"Write Up" Noah and His Ark — "No Signs of a Storm" — 
Confidence in a Father's Piety — The Beasts and Fowls Flock 
to the Ark — A Warning Always comes Before the Blow — " You 
Can't Get In " — The Last Day and the Last Hour — " Are All the 
Children In?" — A Wealthy Land-owner and His Dying Son — 
"Father, Have I Got to Die?" — The Father's Remorse — 
" I Shall be With Jesus To-night " — On the Brink of the Dark 
River — " Father, Won't You Go With Me?" — A Terrible Rail- 
road Accident — The Hymn Book Stained with Blood. 

NOAH received the most awful communication that ever 
came from heaven to earth. I don't believe any man 
has ever received anything so terrible since, — a mes- 
sage that God was going to utterly destroy the world on ac- 
count of its wickedness. 

The Spirit of God strove with that antediluvian world one 
hundred and twenty years. I have no doubt that, if there had 
been one honest cry for mercy during those hundred and 
twenty years, God would have heard that cry. But they 
laughed at the idea that He was going to destroy the world by 
a flood. They mocked and scoffed and jeered at the thought 
of God's destroying the world on account of its wickedness. 

Probably we have not the faintest suspicion of the awful 
wickedness of that first two thousand years. God has not left 
a record, for fear, I suppose, that we might copy some of those 
hellish acts. Men lived nearly a thousand years then. They 
had time to mature in sin. I don't know what would happen 

(522) 



NOAH, THE FANATIC. 523 

if men lived a thousand years now. But the time alloted to 
man now is only three-score years and ten. But, mark this. 
Sin leaped into the world full-grown. The first man born of 
a woman was a murderer, and the wickedness went on, and 
the world became so corrupt and so vile that God sent word 
that He was going to destroy it ; and Noah, at His command, 
went to work to build an ark. I have no doubt that Noah was 
considered the greatest lunatic on the face of the earth. I have 
no doubt that there were atheists then, as now, and perhaps 
there were lecturers running up and down telling people that 
there was no God ; that Noah was " daft " ; that he was a 
fanatic ; that there was no such thing as God's destroying the 
world. 

I once got hold of one of these modern philosophers, who 
took the ground that there is no God. I asked him how this 
world came into being, and he said that force and matter 
worked together, and by chance the world came out. I said, 
" That is singular. I wonder that your tongue is not set on 
the top of your head, and one half of you is not going one way 
and the other half another way." It seems marvelous that 
man happened to be thrown together just as he is. I take a 
watch, and say : " This watch made itself. There is gold, and 
glass, and metal, and they just threw themselves together." 
No one could make an intelligent person believe that a watch 
made itself. Yet here was a man running up and down the 
country saying that this world made itself. 

I met such a philosopher in Scotland. I said : 

" Where do these rocks come from? " 

" I am ashamed of you," said he. " Any schoolboy can 
tell you that. Why, they're made out of sand." 

" Well," said I, " what is the sand made of? " 

" Rocks." 

" Where did the first rock come from? " 

" Sand." 

" Wheie did the first sand come from? " 

" It came from rock." 
32 



524 



NTEREST IN "NOAH'S FOLLY." 



He had it all worked out, as " clear as mud." That was the 
kind of stuff atheists taught in Noah's day. 

There is another class of people who take the ground that 
there is a God, but He is too merciful to punish sin. The 
wicked and the righteous are coming out alike. Or, in other 
words, God came down in that flood to sweep them all into 
Heaven, and left Noah, the only righteous man, to live through 
the deluge. 

Suppose the governor of your state was so merciful that he 
could not bear to have any one suffer, and should set all the 
prisoners free. You would have to impeach him. These very 
men who talk about God's mercy would rise up and say, 
" That man shall not be governor of this state." You would 
have him out of office as soon as possible. 

Then, no doubt, there was a class of people who said, 
" There is a God. He is merciful. But if there comes a flood, 
I won't go into that ark anyway. All we have got to do is to 
climb up on the hills. God couldn't bring a flood big enough 
to cover the mountains. The ark would go to pieces." 

If they had theaters in those days, no doubt they had 
" Noah's Ark " acted out on the stage. If they happened to 
see Noah walking the streets, the women perhaps said, " He is 
not in his right mind. Look at his eyes." And if they had 
newspapers, they would, probably, every once in a while pub- 
lish a dispatch from the Associated Press, headed : " NOAH 
AND HIS FOLLY," and reporters would be sent to " write 
up " Noah and his ark. Every once in a while people would 
have an excursion, or make a picnic to go and visit the ark. 
Visitors came to look at it. You can see them looking around ; 
going up into the different stories of it. If they saw Noah 
around, they would say, " That's him, that's him there ! " Once 
in a while they would pass by, and would not hear the sound 
of the carpenter's hammers. Noah had stopped work, and 
gone off on a preaching tour. Doubtless they told him he had 
better go back to his old ark. Suppose he had been adver- 
tised to speak in a great city, would he have drawn an 



THE LONG-DELAYED STORM. 



525 



audience? Not much. They didn't believe in his folly. Men 
went on buying and selling and getting gain. They kept buy- 
ing and selling their bonds and stocks, and the builders kept 
right on putting up their buildings. Business men said, 
" Noah must be wrong, because he is so greatly in the 
minority." 

But Noah was right after all. A hundred years rolled 
away. If there had been weather prophets in those days they 
would have looked into the heavens and said there were no 
signs of a coming deluge. The stars looked just the same, and 
the sun shone as brightly as ever it did. The lambs skipped 
upon the hillside, children played in the street, and everything 
moved on as it had been moving for all time past. Methuselah 
died, and he didn't say anything about a coming storm. The 
great scholars said, " There is no sign." The geologists said, 
" We can see no sign in the earth of any coming storm. 
Things have been going on for a thousand years as now." 
Others said, " Why, if God is going to destroy the world, does 
he let us have such prosperity? We don't believe it." 

So a hundred and twenty years passed without a sign. I 
don't know at what time of the year the storm burst. It might 
have been in the spring, when men were busy with their 
affairs, and everything was going on finely. And people said : 
" I don't believe there is any danger." That's what they say 
now. The world is growing better all the while. Everything 
is progressing. Of course our sins do not hinder the progress 
of science and literature and invention. I can imagine, one 
morning — perhaps it was beautiful and clear — the whole 
community was startled by Noah's moving his household into 
the ark. The people gather around him and say, " Noah, what 
is your hurry? You don't think there's any danger of a storm 
coming to-day, do you? Why are you moving into that un- 
comfortable ark ? You have only one window in it. There'll 
be time enough when the storm bursts upon us." Noah says 
nothing, but goes right on. Some one has suggested that he 
must have been deaf or he would not have endured the gibes 



526 



MOVING INTO THE ARK. 



of his neighbors. If he was deaf, he was not so deaf but that 
he could hear when God spoke to him. There may be such a 
tumult in this world, that we cannot hear the voice of God. 

But Noah moved in. I have great admiration for any 
parent who lives so that his children have confidence in his 
piety. It seems to me if my children did not believe in my 
religion it would break my heart. Noah's children had con- 
fidence in their father, and when Noah went in his sons went 
in after him. What would have been his feelings if one of his 
sons had been left out? Mothers, just think of it. Get all 
your children into the ark of safety. Make it your life busi- 
ness to get them in. After Noah had gone into the ark, and 
all his family were safely in, I can imagine that the first thing 
that alarmed the scoffers was one morning when, to their sur- 
prise, they saw the heavens black with the fowls of the air, com- 
ing from the four corners of the earth, two by two, mated by 
God, and as they came to the ark Noah took them in. And 
the animals came from their dens and caves, from the four 
corners of the earth, and they came up to the ark two by two. 
The lion and the lamb passed in side by side. And as the 
people looked down on the ground they could see insects creep- 
ing towards that ark two by two, as if guided by an unseen 
hand. I can imagine some of the people crying, " Merciful 
God ! what does all this mean ? " They may have gone to their 
wise men and philosophers and statesmen, saying, " What 
does this mean? " They answer, " We don't know, but there 
is no danger. If the flood really comes we can make rafts 
better than that ark. Or we can flee to the mountains, and we 
shall be far safer there than in the ark." 

Listen. After Noah and his family were all in and the hun- 
dred and twenty years were up, God gave the people seven 
days of grace. During these seven days, if there had been a 
cry for mercy, God would have heard it. I don't believe you 
can find an instance in history where God has not given a 
warning before the blow came. Before the Civil War a wave 
of righteousness passed over this country that brought half 



THE CLOSED DOOR. r 2 J 

a million souls into the church. It was the voice of Grace and 
of Mercy calling them in. Seven days of grace, but not a man 
believed it. The windows of heaven were open, and the 
fountains of the deep were broken up. The sea burst its 
bounds and leaped over its walls. The rivers began to swell. 
People living in the lowlands fled to the mountains and high- 
lands. They fled up the hillsides. And a wail went up : 

" Noah ! Noah ! Noah ! Let us in." 

They leave their homes and come to the ark now. They 
pound on the door. Hear them cry : 

" Noah ! Let us in. Noah ! Have mercy on me." " I am 
your nephew," " I am your niece," " I am your uncle." 

Ah, there is a voice inside, saying: 

" I should like to let you in ; but God has shut the door, and 
I cannot open it ! " 

Ah, God had shut that door ! Their cry came too late. 
Not a solitary man outside of Noah's family believed that the 
last year, the last month, the last week, the last day had come, 
Ay ! the last hour and the last minute. Do you know when that 
minute came? Listen. When God Almighty came down and 
shut the door of the ark, He shut the righteous in, and shut the 
wicked out. There was no more hope. The day of grace was 
over. The doom of the old world was forever sealed. No 
angel, no man, no one but God himself shut that door. It was 
an awful fact. 

At one time when I was preaching in Boston, a business 
man came down from Maine to attend one of the meetings. 
He was late, and the policeman at the door said to him, " You 
can't get in. The door is shut." The man was so impressed 
by that utterance, that he was convicted of sin and was con- 
verted. 

If your life should end to-day, would you die inside the ark 
or outside ? We may be spending our last year on earth. The 
last month has come ; the last week is coming, and to every one 
of us comes the last day, the last hour, and the last minute. 
It is coming to you, young man. It is coming to you, fathers 



5 28 



BRING THE CHILDREN IN. 



and mothers ; it is coming to me. It cannot be evaded. Death 
is on your track and mine. 

Do you know why I took this text? I will tell you. It 
was not so much to go back to Noah's time as to come down to 
the present day. I took it because I want to say a few words 
to fathers and mothers. I want to ask, fathers and mothers, are 
you in the kingdom of God yourselves? Are you sure you are 
in the ark ? If not, let me plead with you. Don't rest until 
you get there. The door stands wide open ; God calls you. If 
you have children that are not in, don't rest until you get the 
whole family in. Get that boy of yours in. Make it your 
business. Mothers, you will be gone by and by. If you don't 
look after your boys while you are living, who will look after 
them when you are dead and gone? Father, who will if you 
do not? I don't believe that it is the will of God that our chil- 
dren should wander into the saloons ; that our newspapers 
should be filled with such reports as we see daily. I appeal to 
every Christian father and mother. Would to God I could 
wake them up, and have them get their children into the ark. 

Some years ago someone sent me a paper, and marked the 
heading, " Are All The Children In ? " The article was about 
an old mother, nearly a hundred years old. Her husband was 
sitting by her side, as she lay dying, and he was watching the 
flickering life go out, when all at once she opened her eyes, and 
looked around, and said : 

" Why ! it is dark." 

" Yes, dear.'* 

" Is it night? " 

" Yes, dear, it is night." 

" Are all the children in? " 

That dear old mother was living life over again. The 
youngest child had been in his grave twenty years ; but the old 
father and husband said : 

" Yes, wife, they are all in." 

And then she fell asleep in Christ. Mothers, are all the 
children in? Are they? 



PARENTS AND CHILDREN. 



531 



I never yet have seen a truly earnest father and mother 
whose hearts were set upon training their children to Christ, 
and who really strove to have their children come, but that 
those children were saved. The impression has gone out that 
the religion of the parents has very little relation to the religion 
of their children ; that the children of pious fathers and 
mothers are sometimes worse than those of other people. A 
man who had heard this once took a certain district and can- 
vassed it, and got the names of every family in the district, and 
the stand that they took in respect to religion and conduct. 
Where he found both the father and mother were Christians, he 
found that the proportion of the children over ten years of age 
who were professed Christians was two-thirds ; where he found 
only one of the two parents a Christian, one-third of the 
children over that age were church members ; and where neither 
father nor mother were Christians, only one-twelfth of the chil- 
dren were Christians. I believe if we are only consistent in our 
lives we shall have all our children with us in the ark at last. 
Every one of them will be brought into the ark, if we pray and 
work earnestly for it. 

A man living in the West spent all his time and energy in 
accumulating wealth. He wanted to buy all the land that ad- 
joined his. He kept on buying till he became one of the greatest 
land proprietors in the West. One day his son was brought 
home in an unconscious state, and after the doctor had ex- 
amined him, he turned to the father, and said : 

" I am afraid this is going to prove fatal." It was an awful 
shock to the father. He said : 

" I can't believe he is going to die. You don't think he is, 
do you? " 

" Yes, I think so." 

" Will he never regain consciousness ?" 

" I am afraid not." 

" Oh ! I cannot have him die without speaking." 

At length consciousness returned, and the father said : 

" My son, do you know this is going to prove fatal? " 



532 



THE PRAYERLESS FATHER. 



" Father, am I dying? " 

" Yes, the doctor says so." 

" Well, father, won't you pray for my soul? You've never 
prayed for my soul ! You've never prayed for my soul ! " 

The father began to weep, and said he could not pray. In 
a little while the boy was again unconscious, and that night he 
died. A friend of mine said, that when that wealthy man 
turned away from the grave of his son, he exclaimed : 

" If I could call him back and make one prayer for him, 
I would willingly give all I have." 

Oh, prayerless fathers and mothers, may God bring you on 
your knees before Him ! How do you expect your children 
will be saved if you don't pray, or set them an example? 

A gentleman had a little boy who was very sick. When he 
went home one day he found his wife weeping, and she said : 

" Our boy is dying ; he has had a change for the worse. I 
wish you would go in and see him." 

The father went into the room and placed his hand upon the 
brow of his dying boy, and he could feel the cold, damp sweat 
gathering there ; the icy hand of death was feeling for the 
chords of life. 

" Do you know, my boy, that you are dying? " asked the 
father. 

" Am I ? Is this death ? Do you really think I am dying? " 

" Yes, my son, your end on earth is near." The little fel- 
low smiled and said : 

" Well, father, I shall be with Jesus to-night, shan't I ? " 

" Yes, you will soon be with the Saviour," and the father 
broke down and wept. 

" Father, don't you weep, for when I get there I will go 
straight to Jesus and tell Him that all my life you have been 
trying to lead me to Him." 

My friends, come into the ark. Bear in mind that you 
are to come now. I cannot say you may come to-morrow. I 
cannot say you may come next week. I do not know what may 
happen before then. Oh, will you not be gathered into the 



IN THE HOUR OF DYING. 



533 



ark of Christ to-day? Will you not this very day erect a 
family altar, and call your children around you, and bid them 
to come into the ark? Thus you may gather them all in, and 
you will have them with you when the morning of the Resurrec- 
tion dawns, and when Christ shall come to make up his jewels. 

Are you in the ark yourselves ? Why not come in and then 
try to bring the children in? It seems to me that parents are 
asleep, and while we are asleep our children are wandering 
down to death. We hear of their dying every day ; we hear 
of their being suddenly taken away, dying outside of the ark, 
while we as parents sleep on. If there seems to be a dark 
mountain between you and the ark, press through the moun- 
tain. Though it is a mountain, it is at the same time but the 
devil's mountain, and the devil's mountains are nothing but 
smoke and fog. Say to yourselves, " This day I will go into 
the ark ; this day I will call my children in ; I will not stay out 
and let them perish." 

A young woman was dying. Her father and mother were 
wealthy. They had brought her up with every wish gratified. 
She had lived in luxury. Her parents bestowed upon her all 
that wealth could buy; but at last she was taken sick, and 
when she drew near to the bank of the river she said : " Father, 
mother, won't you go with me, it is dark ? " They wept bitterly 
over the dying girl, but they told her they could not go. Then 
she wanted them to pray for her, but they didn't know how to 
pray. The father and mother stood at her bedside and sent for 
a minister, but it was too late. When he arrived she was dead. 
My friends, that dark hour will come to all of us. We must 
pass through the valley of the shadow of death, and if we have 
not Christ it will be very dark. 

When I was in Edinburgh, I was pleading with the people 
to come to Christ. A young lady made up her mind she would 
press into the ark of God. The next day she went to one of the 
ministers and said, "Can't you give me something to do?" 
He gave her some tracts to distribute. She went to work and 
distributed the tracts, and the next day she came to the meet- 



534 THE GATE THAT STANDS AJAR. 

ing for the last time. The next morning she took the train 
from Edinburgh to Aberdeen, to go home to her widowed 
mother. She took her hymn-book with her, and on her way 
home she was singing from it. There was another lady in the 
car who had come to the meeting the night before, and had 
heard about Christ, and was convicted and converted. There 
was a collision, and the young convert was killed instantly, and 
the other girl was mortally wounded. She had her hymn- 
book open and it was stained with her blood. As she was 
dying she was heard to sing: " There is a gate that stands 
ajar." I would to God I could say something that would in- 
duce you to come into the ark. 

" There is a gate that stands ajar, 
And through its portals gleaming, 
A radiance from the Cross afar, 
The Saviour's love revealing. 
Oh! depth of mercy! Can it be 
That gate was left ajar for me? 
For me, for me? 
Was left ajar for me? " 

The gate's ajar for you, and all can enter who will. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE RICH FOOL. 

The Biblical Meaning of "Fool" — Working and Planning from the 
Cradle to the Grave — Living for this World Only — Pulling 
Down the Old Barns — Making Plans for the Future — A Visit 
at the Silent Midnight Hour — Pleading With Death — Stricken 
with Grief — The Epitaph on the Monument — A Terrible Mis- 
take — The Mother and the Little Blind Child — One of Mr. 
Moody's Reminiscences — The Sailor's Pertinent Question — A 
Mother's Ambition for Her Only Son — The Prickings of Con- 
science — A Promise to a Dying Mother — The Graves of the 
Household — The Heavenly Vision — " Father, Come this Way " — 
The Little Beckoning Hand — Looking Across the River — 
Where will You be Next Year? 

OUR Saviour once spoke a parable, saying : " The 
ground of a certain rich man brought forth plenti- 
fully : And he thought within himself, saying, What 
shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits ? 
And he said, This will I do : I will pull down my barns, and 
build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my 
goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods 
laid up for many years ; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be 
merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul 
shall be required of thee : then whose shall those things be, 
which thou hast provided? " 

When a man is called a fool in the Bible, it means that he 
lacks spiritual discernment ; or that he is living without God ; 
or that he makes a mock of sin ; or that he says in his heart 
" there is no God." 

This man was, in the sight of men, a very successful man. 
He was one whom many parents would hold up to their sons 

(535) 



536 



A GOOD BUSINESS MAN. 



as a model. I have no doubt that he stood well in the com- 
munity where he lived. 

He was a farmer, and I don't know of any more honorable 
occupation than that. You can't find any fault with that busi- 
ness. Now there are some things he was not : We are not 
told that he was a dishonest man, or untruthful, or that he 
speculated in stocks, or that he brought about panics, or shaved 
notes ; or that he cheated widows ; or that he got up corners 
on grain ; or that he paid fifty cents on a dollar ; or rented his 
property for drinking saloons, or that he was dishonest in any 
respect. I will venture to say that, of you had lived near him, 
you would have heard his neighbors speaking very highly of 
him. He had the reputation of being a shrewd, long-headed, 
upright business man. He had some good live stock from 
Egypt and some from Syria. No man gave better attention 
to his stock. He had the best horses, the finest flocks, and the 
best sheep that could be found in the valley. His farm was 
well kept up ; it was adorned with beautiful shade trees and 
lawns, and everything was trim and tidy. 

Perhaps some of you would say, " That man is good 
enough; let him alone." I will venture to say that if he had 
lived in New England he would have been a leader, an elder, 
or a deacon in the Church. A man with a record like this, — 
a shrewd, successful, prosperous man, — who doesn't get 
drunk, against whom there's nothing to be said, whose " word 
is as good as his bond," whom all his fellow men speak well 
of, may be called a " good " man. 

And yet the Saviour called this man a FOOL. What's 
the trouble ? It strikes me that the trouble is right here : That 
man worked and planned from the cradle to the grave and 
lived and died for just this brief life. He knew nothing about, 
and cared nothing about, another life. Death and eternity had 
no part in his plans. He probably went to church ; and he 
might have gone to Jerusalem to all the religious feasts. He 
gave his " tenth " ; he was an " orthodox " Jew. He observed 
the outward forms, because that gave him great respectability, 



SUMMONED BY DEATH. 537 

and standing, and position. And yet the Saviour says he was a 
FOOL. 

I picture this man in his drawing-room one night. A 
master builder has come in and brought some plans. The 
rich man is going to take down all his old barns and build 
greater. Well, there is no harm in that. It is a great deal 
better to build good barns than to drink them up. A drink- 
ing man would have drunk up the whole property. How his 
face lights up as he talks about " the best farm in the whole 
valley." He is going to have the best barns in the whole valley 
of the Jordan. His wife and children retire ; but he sits up past 
midnight laying plans. He is going to build his barns larger, 
and then say to his soul, " Take thine ease." 

The clock strikes the hour of twelve. But the rich man 
is too much interested over his plans to sleep. He is going to 
sit up longer. And I can imagine, after midnight, when the 
servants have closed all the doors and fastened them securely, 
and the house is quiet and still, a stranger suddenly makes his 
appearance, and the rich farmer looks up in terror, and says : 

" O Death ! You haven't come to call me away so sud- 
denly ? " 

:c Yes. This night thy soul shall be required of thee." 

" O Death ! do not take me so soon ! Let me have a little 
time to get ready. Let me have a little time to set my house 
in order, — to prepare to meet my God." 

" Ah, but you have had year after year, and the time is up. 
You must go to-night." 

" O Death ! stay thy hand. Give me but another year." 

" No, you can't bribe me." 

" But you never warned me." 

" Yes. Your father is gone, and he died younger than you. 
Your mother is gone, and your first-born. Didn't I give you 
warning when I took them ? You have attended the funerals 
of your neighbors for the past twenty-five years. I ought not 
to be a stranger to you. You knew I was coming, but you 
didn't take me into your calculations." 



53» 



AN UNAVAILING PLEA. 



" But O let me call my family, and let me bid them adieu.'' 

" No. I must take you now." 

And he lays his cold hand upon his heart and it ceases to 
beat, and in a little time his body turns cold ; his head drops 
upon his breast, and he is dead. His wife and family hear no 
sound. Death has come in so silently that none of the family 
have heard his step. The morning breaks, and the servants 
begin to move around that home. And the servant whose 
business it is to put the house in order comes into the drawing- 
room. She opens the door and she sees her master in his 
chair, and says : 

" Oh, my master is asleep; I'll not wake him." 

But soon the wife awakes. 

" Where is my husband? " She is alarmed. She calls her 
servant. 

" Have you seen the master?" 

" No." 

She calls the servant that had gone to the drawing-room. 
" Oh, yes," this servant says, " the master is asleep. He fell 
asleep in his chair last night." 

The wife is anxious and hastens to the room, and puts her 
hand on her husband's forehead, — it is cold as marble. He 
has been dead for hours. The alarm soon spreads through 
the house. The children come in weeping. The sorrowing 
neighbors hasten to the house of mourning. In that hot 
country they cannot keep his body, and that same day they lay 
him away in his grave. Perhaps an oration is delivered, and 
he is held up as a beacon light to young men, that they may 
follow in the footsteps of one who has been so successful in this 
life. It may be that they erected a great monument to his 
memory ; but an angel comes down, and writes upon that 
monument one word, — " FOOL." 

My dear friends, if you could see what God has written 
upon the tombstones in cemeteries, how many times you 
would read the word " FOOL." 

You and I may try to make out that this man was wise, a 



THE LITTLE BLIND CHILD. 



539 



man to be held up as an example, but just see what the Son 
of man says about him. He says such a man is an abomina- 
tion to God. The Son of man says : " Thou Fool." He wrote 
his epitaph, and it has been handed down to us as a warning. 

I want to call your attention to the mistake that this man 
made, — that of neglecting his soul's salvation. The greatest 
calamities of life come upon us by simple neglect ! I was once 
in the Chicago Eye Infirmary and a mother came in with her 
baby. " Doctor," she said, " my baby hasn't opened his eyes 
for a number of days. I did not like to open them, for it 
seemed to hurt him. Will you see what the trouble is? " As 
the doctor took the little one and lifted its eyelids the child 
screamed with pain. He said, " Your child is blind. He will 
never see again ! " And when the terrible truth dawned upon 
the mother there came a wail from her heart that made the 
doctor and myself weep ; we could not help it. She pressed 
the child to her bosom, — " Oh, will my darling child be 
blind? Will he never see his mother again? " And her grief 
was uncontrollable. But the doctor told me that if she had 
brought the baby there a few days before, its sight could have 
been saved. The mother had neglected the child until it was 
too late. There is not a mother whose heart does not go out 
with pity towards this afflicted mother. But it is ten thousand 
times worse to neglect a child's soul. What is sight in com- 
parison with the soul ? Yes, I would a thousand times rather 
lose my sight on earth and see God in Heaven, than have my 
sight here and darkness beyond the grave. 

Many years ago I returned to my native town to live, and 
my mind traveled up and down one long street, and I found that 
in twenty years death had been in every house. There was 
not a single street that death had not entered ; my own house 
had been entered ; every neighbor's house up and down the 
street had been entered. Ah, how many homes have been 
entered by death in the last five, ten, fifteen, twenty years? 
Had we not better prepare for death ? 

A sailor was telling a man that his father and his grand- 



540 A PERTINENT QUESTION. 

father and his great-grandfather were all drowned at sea, and 
the man said : 

" Why don't you prepare to die ; you, too, may be drowned 
any day! " 

" Where did your father die ? " inquired the sailor. 

" On land." 

" And your grandfather? " 

" On land." 

" Are you prepared to die ? " 

"Well, no." 

" Why don't you prepare for death? " asked the sailor. 

The man didn't think that he was in danger himself, but 
only that the sailor was. 

What are you living for? What is your aim ? Is it to buy 
and sell? To accumulate money? To die a millionaire? Some 
time ago a man of means married a Christian woman. They 
had one child. The man died. He had been very liberal, but 
after his death the widow hoarded up the money, and said, 
" My mission now is to have my boy a millionaire when he 
is twenty-one." That was a pretty low aim, wasn't it? 

I venture to say there is no person who is not living under 
some broken vow. In some hour of your life you made a vow, 
but you haven't kept it. Even now your conscience reminds 
you of that hour when you made a promise. It might have 
been at the midnight hour. Perhaps a rap came to your door, 
and you were awakened out of a sound sleep to be told that 
your mother was dying. When you reached her bedside she 
was conscious, and she told yon she was going to another 
world ; and she took your hand, and you promised to meet her 
in Heaven. You shed many tears at her grave, and you told 
the minister that you would be a Christian. Are there not 
many who have made such a vow? When your wife was 
taken from you, didn't you say, " I can't call her back, but I 
will serve her God." When your child was taken from you 
didn't you make some vow of that kind ? 

Life seems to me now like going up a hill and then coming 



GRAVES THAT MARK THE WAY. 



541 



down ; we go up the hill slowly, but we come down very fast. 
Days fly away now like hours. A week glides away like a 
day. Months seem like weeks. Look back at the cradle 
from whence you started. It seems only a little while ago, but 
as you look down the hill you see a tombstone. It marks the 
resting-place of some loved member of your family. You 
stood by that open grave and took a solemn vow. You 
promised yourself and your friends that you would lead a dif- 
ferent life from that time on. Why not pay your vows now? 
Why not say, " I will ! God helping me, I will keep that vow. 
I will make it good to-day." But you mark another grave. 
It is not that of mother or father, but a little short grave. A 
little child came into your home and lived for a few years, and 
was the joy of your home ; like the ivy twining around the oak 
it twined itself around your heart. Then death came and took 
the little one, and a solemn feeling came over you, and you 
said, " I cannot call my child back, but I will go to meet him." 
Didn't you make such a promise ? Are you keeping that vow ? 

I remember, a great many years ago, T went from Chicago 
to a little town to try to preach. A Sunday-school convention 
was being held there at the time. I was a perfect stranger in 
the place, and on my arrival, a man stepped up and asked me 
if my name was Moody. I told him it was, and he invited me 
to his house. After escorting me to his home he excused him- 
self, saying that he had to attend the convention, and he asked 
me to excuse his wife also, as she, not having a servant, had 
to attend to her household duties. So he left me in the parlor 
and told me to amuse myself as best I could till he came back. 
The room was dark, and I could not read, and, getting a little 
tired, I thought I would try and get the children of the house- 
hold and play with them. I listened for the sound of child- 
hood in the house, but could not hear a single evidence of the 
presence of little ones. When my friend returned I said : 

" Haven't you any children? " 

" Yes," he replied, " I have one, but she's in Heaven, and I 
am glad she is there, Moody." 
33 



542 A BEREAVED FATHERS ANGUISH. 

" What ! glad that your child is dead ? " 

" Yes." 

" How is that ? Was she deformed, or was anything wrong 
with her?" 

" No, she was as perfect as could be; " and he brought me 
a portrait of a beautiful girl, with golden curls falling down 
her neck, and she looked more like an angel than a child. I 
asked how old she was. 

" Seven." 

" What do you mean by saying you are glad she is in 
heaven? " 

" Well," said he, " I worshiped that child; I was making 
money for her; she was the idol of my heart. One day she 
was taken ill, and in a few days she died. She melted away 
like a snowflake. I accused God of being unjust, and refused 
to be reconciled. I would have torn God from His throne if 
I could. For three days and nights I neither ate, nor drank, 
nor slept. I was almost mad. On the third day I buried her, 
and when I came home my house and my heart were as deso- 
late and dark as the grave. I had lost my child. As I walked 
up and down the room almost frantic I thought I heard the 
voice of my little one, but I said, ' No, it cannot be; that voice 
is hushed forever.' Then I thought I heard her little feet com- 
ing towards me, and I said, ' No, I shall never hear those little 
feet again.' Before that time I had not wept; my agony had 
been too great, but now I threw myself on the bed and began 
to weep. Nature gave way and I fell asleep. I suppose I had 
a dream, but it has always seemed like a vision that God gave 
me — a vision and a voice. I thought I was crossing a barren 
field, and I came to a river that looked so cold and dreary that 
I drew back from it ; but, looking across, I saw the most beauti- 
ful land my eyes had ever rested upon. And I thought sick- 
ness and death never entered that land. Oh, I would like to be 
in a land where death cannot come ; where there is no separa- 
tion, no parting! Then I saw a company on the other side, 
and among them my darling child. She came to the bank of 



"COME RIGHT THIS WAY, FATHER/' ca^ 

the river, and waving her little angel hand, said, ' Father, come 
right this way ; it is so beautiful here.' I went to the water's 
edge, and thought I would plunge in, but it was too deep for 
me — I could not swim. I thought I would give anything to 
cross. I tried to find a boat, but there was none. I looked 
for a bridge, but there was none ; and while I was wandering up 
and down the little angel voice came across the stream, ' Come 
right this way, father; it is beautiful here!' All at once I 
heard a voice as if it came from heaven, saying, ' I am the 
Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man cometh unto the 
Father but by Me.' The voice awoke me from sleep. I 
thought it was God calling me, and that if I would ever see 
my child again I must come to God through Jesus Christ. 
That night I knelt beside my bed and gave myself to God. 
Now I no longer look upon my child as sleeping in her grave, 
but I see her in that beautiful land, and every night when I lie 
down I see her beckoning me heavenward, and I hear her sweet 
voice saying, ' Come right this way, father,' and every morning 
I hear her repeating the same words. Now my wife is a Chris- 
tian ; I am superintendent of the Sunday-school, and eighty- 
one children have been converted, and I am trying to get as 
many converted as I can to go with me to heaven." 

A father was on his death-bed, and he called in his son. 
The boy was careless ; he would not take death into account. 
He wanted to enjoy the pleasures of life, and he took no heed 
of the future. The father said : " My son, I want to ask you 
one favor. Promise me that when I am dead you will come 
into this room for five minutes every day for thirty days. You 
are to come alone, not to bring a book with you ; and sit here." 
The young man promised to do it. The father died. The first 
thing the boy thought of when he went into that room was his 
father's prayers, his father's words, and his father's God, 
and before the five minutes expired he was crying out, " God, 
be merciful to me." 

It seems to me if I could get men to ask themselves, 
" What is going to be my end ? " " Where am I going to 



544 



COME TO HIM TO-DAY 



spend eternity? " it would not be long before they would come 
to Christ. You may be moralists, you may be proprietors of 
a prosperous business, you may be what the world calls suc- 
cessful men, yet, Where are you going to spend eternity? Can 
you tell me where you will be next year? Can you tell me 
where you will be ten years hence? 

Am I speaking to mothers whose children have been taken 
from them ? If they could speak from that world of light they 
would say, " Mother, come this way." Am I speaking to 
fathers whose children have gone across the river? If these 
departed little ones could speak they would beckon and say, 
" Father, come this way." Nineteen hundred years ago our 
Saviour crossed that river. May He help you to come to Him 
to-day ! 



CHAPTER XXX. 

INFIDELS AND INFIDELITY. 

Sending His Daughter From the Room — " I Did not Think it Would 
do Her any Good to Hear What I Said " — A Crooked Path — 
A Son Gone Astray — " Father, I Am Dying " — " What is to 
Become of Me?" — Farewell Forever — Full Inspiration of the 
Bible — Crying for Mercy — A Broken-hearted Wife — The Dying 
Infidel — "What Have I Got to Hold On To?" — Last Words 
of Lord Byron and St. Paul — A Wife's Request — Mr. Moody's 
Visit to an Infidel — Laughed at for His Pains — Asking for Just 
One Favor — "When I Am Converted I Will Let You Know " — 
After Thoughts — A Mental Struggle — A Night of Agony — 
" Try Your Hand On Me " — Remarkable Answer to Prayer — 
Eighteen Infidels Converted. 

SOME time ago I went into a man's house, and when I 
began to talk about religion he turned to his daughter 
and said: 
" You had better go out of the room; I want to say a few 
words to Mr. Moody." When she had gone he opened a per- 
fect torrent of infidelity upon me. 

" Why," said I, " did you send your daughter out of the 
room before you said this?" 

" Well," he replied, " I did not think it would do her any 
good to hear what I said." 

My friends, his rock was not as our Rock. Why did he 
send his daughter out of the room if he believed what he said? 
It was because he did not believe it. Why, if I believed in in- 
fidelity I would wish my daughters and my sons, my wife, and 
all belonging to me, to be sharers in the same belief. I would 
preach it wherever I went. But infidels doubt what they ad- 
vocate. If they believe it, why, when their daughters die, do 

(545) 



546 NO HOPE FOR THE FUTURE. 

they send for a true Christian to administer consolation? 
Why, when they make their last will, do they appoint a Chris- 
tian to carry it out? It is because their rock has no founda- 
tion; it is because in the hour of affliction or adversity, in spite 
of all their boasts of the grandeur of infidelity, they cannot 
trust their infidel friends. " Their rock is not as our Rock, 
even our enemies themselves being judges." 

An atheist denies the existence of God. I contend that his 
rock is not as our Rock, and will let atheists be the judges. 
What does an atheist look forward to? Nothing. He is 
taking a very crooked path in this world. His life has been 
dark and full of disappointments. When he was a young man 
ambition beckoned him on to a certain height. He has at- 
tained to that height, but he is not satisfied. He climbs a little 
higher, and perhaps he has got as far as he can go, but he is 
still dissatisfied, and if he takes a look into the future he sees 
nothing. Man's life is full of trouble. Afflictions are as 
numerous as the hairs of our heads, but when the billows of 
trouble and adversity are rising and rolling over him an atheist 
has no God to call upon ; therefore, I contend, his rock is not 
as our Rock. 

An atheist has all the natural affection it is possible for a 
father to have for his children. He has a son — a noble young 
man — who starts out in life full of promise, but he has not 
the will-power of his father, and cannot resist the temptations 
of the world, and he goes astray. That father cannot call 
upon God to save his son. He sees him go down to ruin step 
by step, and by and by he plunges into a hopeless, godless, 
Christless grave; and as the father looks into that grave he 
has no hope. His rock is not as our Rock. 

Look at him again. He has a daughter lying low with 
fever and racked with pain, but the poor atheist cannot offer 
her consolation. As he stands by her bedside she says: 

" Father, I am dying; in a little while I shall be in another 
world. What is going to become of me? Am I going to die 
like a dumb beast? " 



CRYING TO THE CHRISTIAN'S GOD 



547 



Would an atheist say: " Yes, I love you, my daughter; 
but you will soon be in the grave and eaten up by worms, and 
that will be the end. There is no heaven, no hereafter; it is 
all a myth. People have been telling you there is a hereafter, 
but they have been deceiving you." 

Did you ever hear of an atheist telling his dying child such 
monstrous stuff as that? My friends, when the dark hour of 
affliction comes they call in a Christian minister to give con- 
solation. Why does not the atheist preach no hereafter, no 
heaven, no God, in the hour of affliction? 

But there is another class called deists, who don't believe 
in revelation — who don't believe in Jesus Christ. Ask a 
deist who is his God. " Well," he will say, " He is the begin- 
ning—he who caused all things." These deists say it is of 
no use to pray, because nothing can change the decrees of 
their deity; God never answers prayer. Their rock is not as 
our Rock. In the hour of affliction they, too, send for a 
Christian minister to administer consolation. 

But there is another class. They say, " I am no deist; I 
am a pantheist; I believe that God is in the air; in the sun, in 
the stars, in the water." When we talk to pantheists we find 
them no better than deists and atheists. It was one of this 
sort that Sir Isaac Newton used to talk to. He argued with 
him, and tried to win the pantheist over to his belief, but he 
couldn't. In the hour of his distress, however, he cried out to 
the God of Sir Isaac Newton. Why don't they cry to their 
own God in the hour of trouble. I used to be called on to 
attend a good many funerals. I would inquire what was the 
man's belief. If he was an atheist, or a deist, or a pantheist, 
and if, at the funeral or in the presence of his friends, I said 
one word about that man's doctrine, they would feel insulted. 
Why is it that, in the trying hour of affliction, after they have 
been talking all the time against God, they then call upon be- 
lievers in that God to administer consolation? 

An infidel's rock it not as our Rock. He doesn't believe 
in the inspiration of the Bible. These men are very numerous, 



54 8 



MEN WHO DOUBT THE TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 



and they feel insulted when we call them infidels; but the man 
who does not believe in the inspiration of the Bible is an in- 
fidel. A good many of them are in the church, and not a few 
of them have crept into the pulpit. These men would feel in- 
sulted if we called them infidels, but if a man says — and I 
don't care who he is or where he preaches — that the Bible 
is not inspired, he is an infidel. That is their true name, 
although they don't like to be called by it. Now in the Bible 
there are five hundred or six hundred prophecies, and every 
one of them has been fulfilled to the letter; and yet men say 
they cannot believe the Bible is inspired. Those who cannot 
believe it have never read it. I have heard a great many 
infidels talk against the Bible, but I haven't found the first 
man who ever read the Bible through carefully that remained 
an infidel. 

I was once trying to influence an infidel in my town, and 
I finally got him to promise to read the New Testament. I 
met him a few days afterwards and said to him: 

" How do you get on with that book? " 

" Well," he said, " I have come to the conclusion that John 
the Baptist is a greater character than Jesus Christ; why don't 
you preach in John the Baptist's name? " 

" Well, I will start off preaching in Christ's name, and you 
start out preaching in John's name, and see how we get on." 

" Oh, people are superstitious, and they believe that Christ 
was divine, and all that kind of thing, and you would do more 
good than I would." 

" Well, I will tell you the difference between the two : they 
beheaded )ohn and put his body in the grave, and he hasn't 
got out of that grave yet ; but Christ went into the grave and 
rose again. We worship a living Christ, not a dead Christ." 

Did you ever hear of a Christian recanting in his dying 
hour? You never did. Did you ever hear of Christians re- 
gretting that they had accepted Christianity, and in their dying 
hours embracing infidelity? I would like to see the man who 
could say he had. But how many times have Christians been 



WHAT INFIDELITY DOES. 



549 



called to the bedside of an atheist, or a deist, or an infidel in 
his dying hours, and heard him crying for mercy? In that 
hour infidelity is gone, and he wants the God of his father and 
mother to take the place of his atheism. 

What does infidelity do for a man? " Why," said a 
dying infidel, "my principles have lost me my friends; they 
have sent my wife to her grave with a broken heart; they have 
made my children beggars, and I am going down to my grave 
without peace or consolation." I never heard of an infidel 
going down to his grave happily. How many young men are 
turned away from Christ by them? Let infidels remember 
that God will hold them responsible. 

A few infidels once gathered around one of their dying 
friends, and they wanted him to hold on to the end and die 
like a man. They were trying to cheer him, but the poor in- 
fidel turned to them and said: " Ah, what have I got to hold 
on to?" My friends, let me ask what have you got to hold 
on to? Every Christian has Christ to hold on to — the resur- 
rected man. Thank God, we have some one to carry us 
through all our trials. But what has the infidel got to hold 
on to; what hope has the atheist, the deist, or the pantheist? 
I want to draw a comparison between almost the last words 
of Lord Byron, and those of Saint Paul. Byron died very 
young — he was only thirty-six — after leading an ungodly 
life, and here are some of his last words: 

" My days are in the yellow leaf, 

The flower and fruit of life are gone; 
The worm, the canker, and the grief 
Are mine alone." 

Compare these words with those of St. Paul : " I have 
fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the 
faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of right- 
eousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me 
at that day." What a contrast! What a difference! 

As I was coming out of a daily prayer-meeting in one of 
our Western cities a lady came up to me and said: 



550 THE SKEPTIC'S SNEER. 

" I want you to ask my husband to come to Christ." 

I took out my memorandum book and put down his name. 
She said: 

" I would like to have you go and see him." 

I recognized the name as that of a learned judge, and so 
I said to her: 

" I can't argue with him. He is a good deal older than 
I am, and it would be out of place. Then, I am not much on 
an infidel argument." 

" Well, Mr. Moody," she said,. " that is not what he wants. 
He's had enough of that. Just ask him to come to the 
Saviour." 

She urged me so hard that I consented to go. I went to 
the office of the judge, and told him what I had come for. He 
laughed at me. 

" You are very foolish," he said, and he began to argue 
with me. " I don't think it will be profitable for me to hold 
an argument with you," I said. " I have just one favor I want 
to ask, and that is that when you are converted you will let 
me know." 

" Yes," said he, " I will do that. When I am converted I 
will let you know " — with a good deal of sarcasm. I thought 
the prayers of that wife would be answered if mine were not. 

A year and a half after, I was in that city again, and a 
servant came to my door and said: 

" There is a man in the drawing-room waiting to see you." 
I found the judge there. He said: 

" I promised I would let you know when I was converted." 

I had heard it from other lips, but I wanted to hear it from 
his own. He said his wife went out to a meeting one night 
aud he was at home alone, and while sitting by the fire he 
thought, " Suppose my wife is right, and my children are 
right; suppose there is a heaven and a hell, and I shall be 
separated from them." His first thought was, " I don't be- 
lieve a word of it." The second thought was, " The God that 
created me is able to teach me, and give me life." He was 



STRUGGLING INTO THE LIGHT. 



551 



too proud to get down on his knees, but he said, " O God, 
teach me." " And as I prayed," said he, " I don't understand 
it, but it began to grow very dark, and my heart became 
heavy. When my wife returned I was afraid to tell her what 
had happened, so I pretended to be asleep. She knelt down 
beside the bed, and I knew she was praying for me. I kept 
crying, ' O God, teach me.' I had to change my prayer, ' O 
God, save me ; O God, take away this burden.' But it grew 
darker and darker, and the load grew heavier and heavier. 
The next morning all the way to my office I kept crying, ' O 
God, take away this load.' I gave my clerks a holiday, closed 
my office and locked the door. I fell down on my knees and 
cried in agony, 'O God, for Christ's sake, take away this guilt.' 
I don't know how it was, but it began to grow very light. I 
said, I wonder if this isn't what they call conversion. I think 
I will go and ask the minister if I am not converted." He said 
to me : 

" Mr. Moody, I have enjoyed life in the last three months 
more than all the rest of my life put together." 

The judge did not believe; the wife did; and God honored 
her faith and saved that man. The old judge went to Spring- 
field, 111., and stood up in public and told politicians what God, 
for Christ's sake, had done for him. 

There is not a heart so hard that God cannot touch it. 
While in Edinburgh a man was pointed out to me by a friend, 
who said: 

" Moody, that man is chairman of the Edinburgh infidel 
club." So I sat down beside him, and said: 

" Well, my friend, I am glad to see you at this meeting. 
Are you not concerned about your future welfare? " 

" I don't believe in a hereafter," he said. 

" Well, you just get down on your knees and let me pray 
for you." 

" I don't believe in prayer," he replied. 

I tried unsuccessfully to get him down on his knees, and 
finally I knelt down beside him and prayed for him. Well, 



552 



THE PRAYER ANSWERED. 



he made a good deal of sport over it, and I met him again 
many times in Edinburgh after that. Some time afterwards, 
while in the north of Scotland, I met him again. Placing my 
hand on his shoulder, I said: 

" Hasn't God answered that prayer? " 

" There is no God," he replied, " I am just the same as I 
always have been. If you believe in a God, and in answer to 
prayer, do as I told you. Try your hand on me." 

" Well," I said, " God's time will come; there are a great 
many praying for you; and I have faith to believe you are 
going to be blessed." 

A few months afterwards I was in Liverpool, and while 
there I received a letter from a leading barrister of Edin- 
burgh, telling me that my friend, the infidel, had come to 
Christ, and that of his club of thirty men seventeen had fol- 
lowed his example. How it happened he could not say, but 
whereas he was once blind, now he could see. God answered 
the prayer. I didn't know how it was to be answered, but I 
believed it would be and it was done. 

Let us have the spirit of His Word, and if we understand 
it we can meet these infidels. People talk about studying 
books to meet them. All we want is the Word of God. It 
will cut down deep. They may fight and kick and talk (some 
of them will even swear), but just give them the Word, and 
the Spirit will do its own work. I have known men to come 
into the inquiry-room just to talk and discuss and get up an 
argument. Well, I generally take the Bible and give them a 
few verses. " But," they say, " I don't believe the Bible." I 
give them more verses and they say the same thing. But I 
just keep on giving them verses. It is God's own Word. I 
am no match for infidels, but this Word is; this Book tells all 
about them. There have been infidels for six hundred years, 
and probably will be until the millennium; but, thank God, 
there won't be any then. 

When Wilmot, the great infidel, lay dying, he put his hand 
upon the Bible and said: "The only thing against that 



CONDEMNED BY THE BIBLE. 



553 



Book is a bad life." When a man has got a bad record against 
him, he wants to get that Book out of the way, because it 
condemns him; that is the trouble. The trouble is not with 
the Bible; it is with your record and mine. Because that 
Book condemns sin we want to get it out of the way. Men 
do not like to be condemned; that is the trouble. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

BACKSLIDERS AND BACKSLIDING. 

People Who Have " Never Slid Forward " — Mr. Moody's Theology — 
The Cause of Hard Times — The Curse of Tobacco and Whis- 
key — " I Have Had a Bitter Time " — Mr. Moody and the Old 
Backslider — An Incident of the Civil War — A Father Searching 
the Hospitals for His Son — " John Thompson, Your Father Wants 
You" — Peculiarities of Backsliders — Pretexts and Excuses — 
Bad Husbands and Wretched Wives — Story of the Boy in "the 
Bush" — An Incident in Mr. Moody's London Experience — A 
Man and His Four Photographs — Advertising Himself as a 
"Prominent Worker" — Sneaking Home — An Incident on the 
Tennessee River — " O, For a Drink of Water from My Father's 
Well! " — An Incident on the Plains. 

THERE are people who call themselves backsliders, who, 
as some old divine said, " never slid forward." They 
unite with the church thinking that it will lead to their 
conversion, but they soon find they haven't been converted. 
In a few months they call themselves " backsliders." They 
are not backsliders at all, and are not to be dealt with as such. 
Backsliders are they who are born of the Spirit, who " have 
tasted of the heavenly gift," and of " the good word of God," 
and have been drawn back to the beggarly elements of the 
world. It is not necessary to be a public backslider to be 
classed as a backslider. 

Now, this is the verse to which I want to call attention : 
" Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask 
for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and 
ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not 
walk therein." 

" Ask for the old paths." Some one once brought the 

(554) 



TONING DOWN THE COMMANDMENTS. 



555 



charge against me that my theology was old ; too old for the 
present day. Well, it is as old as the world. Truth never 
grows old ; truth is as young to-day as it has ever been. Talk 
of the old truths wearing out ! Don't you enjoy the rays of the 
same sun which has been shining these thousands of years? 
" Worn out? " " The old paths? " We don't like the paths 
of the Fathers ; they were too puritanical. Hasn't this nation 
given up the Sabbath? Are not trains on the railroads and 
barges on the rivers loaded with excursionists on Sunday, 
while many churches are almost empty? 

I believe that this is the best land that God has given to any 
nation, a land flowing with milk and honey, and it is a poor 
man's paradise. If a man will let whiskey and tobacco alone 
he can soon have his own home. Think of the millions of dol- 
lars put into tobacco and whiskey. Is it any wonder people 
complain about " hard times " ? What we want is to have a 
revival of righteousness, and we will have " good times." Then 
our cities will not be overrun with men out of work nor filled 
with the cry of the poor and the needy. Think of the suffering 
in even one large city for forty-eight hours just for the want 
of food and fuel ; and what causes it but our sins and iniquities ? 
There is no use closing our eyes and saying, " It is not true." 

Some time ago I was talking with a man highly esteemed 
in the church, and he said : 

" It is not necessary to be so puritanical. When the Lord 
Jesus came He toned down the commandments." 

" Did He tone down the First Commandment? " I asked. 

" No, not that one." 

" Honor thy father and thy mother? " 

" No. It is too well toned down now in this country/' 

" Thou shalt not steal? " 

"No." 

" Thou shalt not commit adultery? " 

"No." 

And I came to this one last, " Remember the Sabbath day, 
to keep it holy." And he said : 



556 THE SUNDAY NEWSPAPER. 

" The Lord toned that one clown." 

Do you believe it? Do you believe the Lord picked out 
one of these commandments and toned it down, and gave us 
liberty to turn the Day of God into a day of recreation, instead 
of making it a Holy Day unto the Lord? No. I believe that 
if a person reads the newspapers seven days in the week, he 
has backslidden. I don't believe you can read Sunday news- 
papers and keep your heart warm. The Sunday newspaper 
takes the place of the Bible with many men, and if a man reads 
it and goes to church, Gabriel couldn't gain his attention. 
Bore a hole in that man's head and you will find it full of items 
of news gathered from all over the world. 

Did you ever hear of a backslider bidding " good-bye " 
to the church of Christ ? Did you ever hear of one going into 
the closet and saying, " I have known you now for ten years. 
Your service is hard and unequal. You are a hard Master, and 
the world is better than you are, and I have come to bid you 
' good-bye.' I am going to leave you. Farewell, Lord Jesus." 
You never did hear that, and you never will. 

I have never seen a father and mother who both were back- 
sliders, that their children haven't gone to ruin. I have talked 
with a good many backsliders' children, and they asked me 
this : " If there is so much pleasure in religion, why did my 
father and mother give it up ? " It is an argument I have 
never been able to answer. 

" It is an evil thing and bitter " to forsake the Lord. 
Mothers, you have children coming on after you. What is 
going to become of them? One of the saddest pictures in 
history is that of Lot going through the streets of Sodom at 
midnight. He goes to a house and knocks at the door, and 
some one inside says, " Who is there? " " Your father. There 
are messengers from heaven at my house, and they tell me that 
this city is going to be destroyed. I want you to flee from 
the city with me." And they laugh at the old man. I see him 
going to another house and knocking, and another asks, 
" Who is there? " " Your father-in-law, Lot. I have a mes- 



"AN EVIL THING AND BITTER." ccy 

sage from Heaven. We must leave the city at early day- 
break." And they laugh at him and mock him. Lot had 
taken his children into Sodom, but he could not get them out. 
He is a good specimen of a backslider. 

Once when I was in St. Louis, I tried to lead an old, white- 
haired backslider back into the kingdom of God. He had been 
there twenty years and his religion didn't bear transportation. 
He lost it somewhere between the East and St. Louis. I 
worked and worked upon him for a long time, trying to get him 
to come back. I spoke about this verse : " Thine own wicked- 
ness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee : 
know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that 
thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that my fear is not 
in thee, saith the Lord God of Hosts." 

" Did you say that verse is in the Bible? " he said. " Read 
it again." 

I read it slowly and carefully. The man dropped his head 
and said, " That is true. I have had a bitter and an evil time 
of it." 

But he came back. About midnight the old man went 
away, as I thought, rejoicing. But the next night when I was 
preaching he sat in front of me, and the poor fellow looked as 
if he hadn't a friend on the face of the earth. When I went 
into the inquiry-room he followed me in, and said : 

" I am in trouble. This has been the most wretched day 
of all my life ! " 

" That is singular," I said, " I thought that God restored 
to you the ' joy of His salvation ' last night." 

" So He did, and I think God has spoken peace and for- 
giveness to my soul. But I have four married sons and 
daughters in this city, and I have spent the day in talking with 
them personally ; and there was not one who didn't mock me, 
and call me ' an old fool.' I led them into iniquity, but I can't 
lead them out." 

The most pathetic, the most tender, tire most loving words 
in the Bible have been addressed to backsliders. God is trying 
34 



558 



A FATHER FINDS HIS SON. 



to woo his erring sons back to himself. When General Grant 
lay in front of the enemy in the Wilderness, a father in the 
North heard that his son had been wounded, and he started for 
the army. When he arrived at the front he couldn't find any 
trace of his boy. The hospitals were filled with sick and 
wounded soldiers. The father couldn't eat, drink, nor sleep 
until he had found his son. Going down through a ward he 
would cry out : 

" John Thompson, your father wants you ! " 

The sick and wounded soldiers would lift their heads, and, 
I suppose, said to themselves, " I wish that was my father call- 
ing to me." He passed from one hospital to another, and his 
voice would ring through the wards : 

" John Thompson, your father wants you." 

And by and by a wounded soldier lifted his head and 
said: 

" Here I am, father ! " 

The father put his arms around his neck and kissed him. 
Oh, backslider, God wants you. Say to Him, " Here I am, 
Father ! " 

There is one peculiarity about the pit into which backsliders 
fall, and that is, there is only one way out of it, and that is the 
way they got in. The same road that took you away from 
Christ is the very road that will take you back. You left Him 
without cause. I will challenge any backslider to give a good 
reason for leaving the Lord. Have you an excuse that will 
bear the light of eternity? Some women say, " It is my hus- 
band. He has not treated me well." That ought to have 
brought you nearer to Christ. Was it the Lord who gave you 
a bad husband ? Some men say, " My wife has not done as 
she ought." Should that alienate you from Christ? You 
have met with affliction. God does not afflict you willingly. 
He never has, and never will. Did you ever punish a child? 
Did you not do it for the child's good, and not for the pleasure 
of doing it ? I never see fathers and mothers who really like 
to punish their children. When they chasten them it is for 



CONVERTED IN "THE BUSH. 



561 



their good, and if you are under the chastening hand of God, 
don't rebel and think Him a hard Master. 

Now, if you want to return to the Lord, there is nothing to 
hinder you but your own will; your backslidings can't keep 
you, because He will blot them all out if you'll only let Him. 

A man once said to me : " Mr. Moody, I think I have been 
so mean and wicked and contemptible that the Lord would not 
receive me." I said, " That is your thought and not God's 
thought. Did you ever see a son who had gone astray, whose 
father and mother, when he came home with a broken heart, 
were not willing to receive him ? " 

When I was in London we received a request to pray for a 
boy who had gone off into " the bush," as they called it in Aus- 
tralia. The father and mother seemed to be broken-hearted. 
Their boy had gone to a far-off country in his sins, and they 
wanted united prayer offered for him. I suppose that not less 
than twenty thousand people offered prayer for that young man 
at one time in one of the largest meetings in Agricultural Hall. 
Away off in the wilds of Australia, as he was one day leaving 
his hut, he received a letter telling him how many people had 
prayed for him. On his way back to his hut he was so over- 
come by remorse that he could not ride. He got off his horse 
and went into " the bush," and God converted him right there. 
He wrote his parents what had happened, and they wrote to 
him to come home as soon as he could. They were so afraid 
that he would reach home late at night and they would not see 
him that they had a bell hung so that it could wake up the 
whole family, so anxious were they to see him. That is the way 
God receives backsliders. 

" Ring the bells of Heaven, there is joy to-day, 
For a soul returning from the wild." 

That is the hymn that Mr. Spurgeon loved to quote so 
much. He liked to tell of the joy in heaven over the one sinner 
that repents. 

When you tell a young convert that you had rather hear him 
speak than the minister, you are spoiling him. Many have 



562 



A "PROMINENT" CHRISTIAN. 



been spoiled in that way. When he thinks he is strong, down 
he goes. He backslides from a lack of humility. A man who 
has not humility is in a backslidden state. If he puffs himself 
up and says, " I, I, I, I," and he thinks more of himself than he 
does of any one else, he is backsliding. I once received a letter 
from a man whose photograph was on the outside of the envel- 
ope. He advertised himself as a prominent Christian worker. 
I think he was. His letter paper had another big photograph 
of himself, and he had two printed notices with his photograph. 
I received four photographs from him. Well, I felt as if that 
man had backslidden. What does the Bible say? " Pride 
goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." 
If a man gets puffed up and vain, isn't he in danger of back- 
sliding? 

When a man follows the Lord afar off, he can't testify for 
Jesus, and he can't bring any one to Him. Can he? You've 
got to be near the Lord to introduce others to Him. One night 
in Philadelphia a friend of mine was passing a drinking saloon 
and he saw a church-member inside playing cards. He took 
out a plain card from his pocket and wrote upon it, " The Lord 
is my witness." 

" Take that in," he said to a boy, " and give it to that man." 
The man took it and read it, and said to the boy : 

" Who gave you that card ? " 

" A stranger going by," said the boy. And the man rushed 
to the door and looked up and down the street, and then 
sneaked off home. 

That church-member was following the Lord afar off, wasn't 
he ? If a man goes to a saloon and gets drunk he is following 
the Lord afar off, isn't he ? If a man goes to a billiard-hall and 
plays to see who shall pay for the drinks, if he is a professed 
Christian, isn't he following the Lord afar off? 

Whenever you find a man who has got away from Christ, 
the living fountain, he is all the time thirsty. I remember once, 
during the Civil War, coming down the Tennessee River in a 
boat full of wounded soldiers. It was in the spring time, when 



THE WATER OF LIFE. 563 

the water was very roily. There was almost a teaspoonful of 
sand to a tumbler full of water, and you could not filter it. We 
gave it to the men, but it did not quench their thirst. The 
more they drank the more they wanted. We gave it to one 
man who was dying, and I remember the last words he said 
were, " Oh, for a drink of water from my father's well ! " 

Ah ! that ought to be the prayer of every child of God and 
of every backslider, " Oh, for a drink of water from my Father's 
well ! " and if we drink of that living water from the wells of 
salvation it will satisfy. Thank God, there is no price to salva- 
tion, it is as free as any gift we can have, and all we have to do 
is to take it. 

Once when we were traveling on the great plains we 
thought we could see water in the distance. The men and 
beasts with us were very thirsty. On we started towards what 
we thought was water, but we were deceived. It was only a 
mirage. We saw something that looked like water a little 
further on ; again we were disappointed ; and we went on and 
on for hours, and still no water, and all were suffering. So it 
is with hundreds and thousands of people, they think that a 
little further on they will find that which will satisfy them. 
But at last we saw water, and the mules started on a dead run 
for it. When we reached it the men were so thirsty that they 
did not wait to get their cups, but drank out of their caps or 
anything else. It was sweet, and so the water of life is sweet 
to the man who is really thirsty. 

No one need go unsatisfied if he will only come to Christ. 
A young girl was going to a spring for water, and when she 
found it dry she started to go up higher to another spring. On 
the way a person met her who asked her what she would do if 
she found that dry, too. She answered that she would go up 
still higher to another spring. So, my friends, if the springs 
we have been drinking from are dry, let us go up a little 
higher. There we will find a fountain that has never yet been 
dry. It bursts forth from the throne of God ; it is the pure 
stream of the water of life. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

One Thing God Cannot Do — What Became of the Missing Five 
Dollars? — Three Stumbling Blocks — A Humorous Incident — 
The Man Who was Looking for " Cold Chills " — A Re- 
markable Incident in Mr. Moody's Career — Mr. Moody Loses 
His Way — " Would You Tell Me Who You Are? " — An Aston- 
ished Scotchman — The Colorado Convict and His Flowers — 
" They Remind Me of My Mother " — Obstinate Sammy — An 
Incident in Glasgow — A Memorable Night — How Did John 
Draw the Crowd? — A "Sensational" Preacher — "Did You 
Notice His Coat?" — Remarkable Story of Mr. Moody's Neigh- 
bor, Long — The Text Written on the Flyleaf — The Pointing 
Finger of a Madman — Mr. Moody's Visit to Neighbor Long's 
House — A Message From the Grave — Dying in the Flames. 

REPENTANCE. 

IT MAY sound rather harsh, but nevertheless it is true, that 
there is one thing that God Himself cannot do. I repeat 

«. it, there is one thing that God Himself cannot do. He 
cannot forgive a man who does not want to be forgiven. Sup- 
pose I am going out for the afternoon and I command my boy 
not to go out of doors. When I get back, the servant says : 

" I am sorry to say your son has been disobedient. He 
went out with some bad boys. He watched for your return, 
and when he saw you coming he slipped back into the house." 

I call my boy and say: 

"John, have you been out this afternoon?" 

" No, sir." 

" Look me straight in the eye, and tell me, have you dis- 
obeyed me, have you been out of doors? I had fifty dollars 
in that drawer, and I find five dollars is missing. Do you 
know anything about it?" 

" No, sir." 

(564) 



BEYOND FORGIVENESS. 



565 



" Have you been to my drawer? " 

" No, sir." 

" Do you know what became of the missing five dollars? " 

" No, sir, I think the servant must have taken it." 

Then I call the servant. 

"Has John been out this afternoon?" 

" Yes, sir. Your weren't out of the house five minutes 
when some boys came around whistling, and he went out." 

" Do you know anything about his taking my money? " 

" Yes, sir. John took it." 

When John can't deny it any longer, he says: 

" I took it." 

" Are you sorry? " 

" No." 

" Will you promise me that you won't do it again? " 

" No, sir; I will do it every time I can." 

Will you tell me how I am going to forgive that boy? 
Hasn't he put himself beyond my reach? I may weep over 
him, I may pray night and day for him, but I can't make him 
repent. I can't make him ask to be forgiven. Doesn't his 
will come in there? I repeat, hasn't he put himself beyond my 
reach? That is the condition of hundreds and thousands to- 
day. A man says, " I won't forsake whiskey; I won't forsake 
gambling; I won't stop blaspheming God; I will be a hypo- 
crite; I won't forsake my backslidings; I won't forsake my sin. 
I will live in it, and I will die in it." Well, you can. You are 
a free agent. God cannot make a man free and bind him at 
the same time. God has made us free moral agents, to choose 
between good and evil. If we choose evil, we must reap the 
fruits of evil. If we choose right and righteousness, we shall 
reap a good harvest. Won't we? Isn't that so? But sup- 
pose I am one of those soft-hearted fathers, and can't bear to 
have my boy go on feeling that I am not willing to forgive him; 
and I say, " He doesn't want to be forgiven, but I will forgive." 
That is where David made a blunder with Absalom. David 
forgave Absalom before he repented, and before he asked to 



566 



STUMBLING BLOCKS. 



be forgiven. And what was the result? He drove his father 
from the throne, and he would have taken David's life. I 
don't believe a man will ever see the kingdom of God who does 
not repent. And it would be hell to him if he got there. That 
boy would be perfectly miserable in my company as long as he 
was in that state. 

There are three stumbling blocks in man's way to God: 
his sins, his thoughts, his will. They stand in every man's 
way. There are three other stumbling blocks: human re- 
ligion, human wisdom, and human righteousness. If a man 
is willing to give up his sins, God does not hesitate to forgive 
him. But the trouble is, man wants to go to God with all his 
sins ; he does not want to give them up. Man doesn't like to 
give up either his will or his way. It is said of Bunyan that 
when he was awakened, and the Spirit of God was striving with 
him, he was playing a game of " cat " in the fields. " Bunyan," 
a voice seemed to say, " will you give up your sins and go to 
heaven, or hold on to them and go to hell? " Bunyan had to 
face that question. Every man faces that question. 

Now, it is the hardest thing for a man to become a Chris- 
tian, and yet it is the easiest. That is a paradoxical statement, 
but what I mean is that it is a very hard thing to do until he 
makes up his mind, and a very easy thing to do after he has 
made it up. I had a little nephew who took a Bible he saw 
lying on the table and threw it on the floor. His mother said 
to him: 

" Go and pick up uncle's Bible." 

" I don't want to." 

" I didn't ask you whether you wanted to or not; go and 
pick it up." 

" I won't." 

" Why, Charlie, who taught you that naughty word? " 

She found out that the little fellow not only knew what it 
meant, but he meant every word he said. The mother said: 

" Charlie, I never heard you talk like that before. If you 
don't go and pick up uncle's Bible, I shall punish you." 



CONQUERING THE WILL. rfiy 

" I won't do it." 

She told him again that if he didn't pick up the Bible she 
would punish him. Then he said he couldn't; he didn't want 
to. That is the trouble with men; they don't want to come. 
Christ says, " Ye will not come to me that ye might have life." 
It is not because men can't come to God; it is because they 
won't. 

The little fellow looked at the Bible on the floor as though 
he would like to pick it up, but he couldn't. At last he got 
down on the floor and got both arms around the book and 
apparently tried to lift it, but he said he couldn't. 

" Now," the mother said, " Charlie, pick up that book or I 
shall punish you, and you will have to pick the book up, too." 

I felt very much interested; for I knew if she didn't break 
his will he would break her heart eventually. At last she 
conquered the little fellow's will ; and the minute that was done, 
he picked up the book easily enough. 

When men are willing to break with sin, the intellectual 
difficulties are very small. I heard of a couple of men who 
crossed a river to do some work. They got drunk, and after 
a while they returned to their boat, got into it, and pulled for 
the other side. They pulled and pulled, but they didn't make 
any headway, and finally one said, " Isn't it strange that we 
haven't got to the other shore?" They kept on pulling and 
pulling until both were tired out, and then they found they 
hadn't untied the boat; they had been tied to the shore all the 
time. You laugh at that; but men are anchored to some cer- 
tain sin. They wonder why they don't get on. Break the 
rope! If you are willing to turn from sin, God meets you and 
gives you power. 

The trouble is, people have confused ideas upon this sub- 
ject. They think repentance is something mysterious. They 
imagine some sort of a sensation, a feeling, goes with it, and 
that they must have it. I was once talking to a man over fifty 
years old who lived in a town adjoining my own. In fact, I 
could look across the river into his house. I said to him: 



568 



WAITING FOR A SENSATION. 



"Why don't you get religion ?" 

" It never struck me." 

"What? What?" 

" Oh," he said, " some people it strikes, and some it don't." 

There was a good deal of religious interest in my town at 
that time, and my neighbors were nearly all converted. But 
there he was, fifty-six years old, waiting for something to 
" strike " him. I know of many people waiting for something 
to strike them. 

A man who was trying to find Christ said he thought if 
he were converted " cold chills " would run down his back. He 
thought he would have a good deal of " feeling." A man may 
have a good deal of feeling and not repent. Did you ever see 
a man who realized what he had done when he was drunk, and 
promised his wife and family that he would never drink again, 
and yet was drunk inside of forty-eight hours? Yes, he had 
feeling, but that is not repentance. Did you ever go to the 
court room and do your best to get a weeping man released, 
and then have him steal your pocketbook before he went to 
bed? He had plenty of feeling, but that is not repentance. 
Repentance is not remorse. Judas had enough to drive him 
to the grave of a suicide. Remorse is one thing; repentance 
is another. 

Repentance is not feeling. Mark that! There are thou- 
sands of people with arms folded who are just waiting for some 
queer kind of feeling to come to them. They think repentance 
is a certain kind of feeling; that they will feel very badly, very 
sorrowful — got to weep a good deal, before they will be in 
condition to come to God. Now, a man may feel very badly 
and not repent. I venture to say if you go into any prison you 
cannot find a prisoner there who does not feel sorry he got 
caught, awful sorry — shed a great many tears in court on his 
trial. He is sorry he got caught. That is all. But there is 
no true repentance; no turning to God. I once preached 
seven months to the convicts in the Maryland penitentiary. I 
found human nature just the same under lock and key that it 



WHAT REPENTANCE IS NOT, 



569 



is outside of prison walls. There were a great many prisoners 
there who had been sentenced for five or ten years who showed 
no signs of repentance at all. They were very sorry they were 
caught. They would have liked to get out very well ; and 
perhaps if they had they would have committed the same 
offense right over again. That is not repentance at all. 

What is repentance, then? I will tell you what it is not. 
It is not going to meetings and shedding a few tears and 
making good resolutions. Repentance is not fear. A great 
many people say I don't preach the terrors of religion. I don't 
want to — don't want to scare men into the kingdom of God. 
I don't believe in preaching that way. If I did get some in 
that way they would soon get out. If I wanted to scare men 
into Heaven I would just hold the terrors of hell over their 
heads and say, " go right in." But that's not the way to win 
men. Terror never saved a man yet. Look at that vessel 
tossing upon the stormy sea ; the sailors think she is going to 
the bottom and that death is nigh. They fall on their knees, 
and one would think they were all converted. They are not 
converted ; they're only scared. There's no repentance there, 
and as soon as the storm is over and they are safe on shore they 
are just the same as before. How many men, while lying on a 
sick bed, when they thought death was near, have made up 
their minds to live a new life if they only got well again ; but 
the moment they were better they forgot all about their good 
resolutions. Fear is one thing, and repentance is another. 

You ask, What is it? The best definition I can find is, 
Afterthought. It is a change in one's ideas. It is a change in 
one's mind. Some one asked a soldier how it happened that 
he became a Christian. He said, " The Lord said to me 
'Halt! Right-about face! March!' and that was all there 
was to it." If you are going the wrong way, face about and go 
the other way. True repentance is turning around and going 
the other way. Suppose I want to go from Boston to New 
York, and I board the train at the station, and a man says: 

" Where are you going? " 



570 TRAVELING BY ONE'S FEELINGS. 

" To New York." 

" Not on this train." 

" Oh, yes, sir." 

" But this train is going to Maine. I have been in and out 
of this station a good many times, and I know all about this 
train. I tell you this train is going to Maine." 

He convinces me that I am on the wrong train, and that I 
will go to Portland if I remain on it. 

Now, repentance is taking my gripsack and getting out of 
that train. Nothing mysterious about that. The Bible says, 
" Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die? " 
Will you do it? You know right from wrong. If you are 
wrong, make haste and face about at once. If you are in bad 
company, get out of that company. Cut their acquaintance 
right off. Face about! Tell them that you are not going their 
way any longer. Let the drinking man give up strong drink 
at once; let the dishonest man give up dishonesty. I don't 
care how you " feel." You may have to go against your 
feelings. 

I preached and lived in Chicago eighteen years. I know 
that Chicago is on the west side of Lake Michigan. I once 
went down to Cleveland, and for the forty days that I was there 
the sun rose in the west and set in the east, according to my 
feelings. At another time I was in my county, preaching. I 
had never been to the upper end of the county before, and 
when I crossed a bridge and went down the river, I said, " I 
am sure this is the road to Quincy; " but after traveling a while 
it occurred to me that I had better ask, because I was going by 
my feelings altogether. So I shouted to a man, and said: 

" Hello! Am I on the right road to Quincy? " 

" No, sir, you are going right away from it." 

And I concluded that man had probably been to Quincy, 
and was acquainted with the way. So I turned my horse 
about and went on to Quincy. Before I turned I had traveled 
according to my feelings; but I was now traveling against my 
feelings. Turn from sin, and come to Christ. 



A TEXT THAT EXCITED CURIOSITY. 



571 



I knew a Scotchman who said he wouldn't be converted 
under the preaching of an American. No amount of coaxing 
could induce him to come to our meetings. Some time after, 
we were in the north of Scotland, and I was preaching in the 
open air on the banks of the Inverness; the sun doesn't set 
there until about ten o'clock. I preached from the words of 
Naaman, " I thought," and once in a while I would bring out 
the text, " I thought." This Scotchman was employed by a 
merchant in another city who had sent him up there on bus- 
iness, hoping that he would somehow get into the meetings. 
That evening he happened to be down on the banks of the 
river, and from a distance he heard the text, " I thought; " and 
he said to himself "That is funny language; I wonder what 
that fellow is thinking about, anyway." He didn't know there 
was any preaching going on; he just saw in the distance a man 
standing there with a crowd of people in front of him, and he 
said, " Well, I think I'll go and see what he's ' thinking ' 
about." So he came and listened, and the word of God got 
hold of him. He came into the inquiry-meeting, and I said 
to him: 

"Are you a Christian?" 

" No, but I should like to be one." 

I sat down and talked with him, and he accepted Christ. 
I took out my pencil and said to him: 

"Would you be kind enough to give me your address; I 
would like to send you a book? " He gave it to me and said: 

" Would you tell me who you are, sir? I would like to 
know the name of the man who helped me into the kingdom." 

" My name is Moody." 

" What," he said, " Moody and Sankey? " 

" Yes, sir." 

Then he told me that he had made a vow never to hear me. 
You ought to have seen the look on that Scotchman's face! 

When I hear a man complaining about God's plan of salva- 
tion, I always ask him what he would do to save the world. 
Man says, Educate. Education does not save a man. An edu- 



572 



THE CONVICT'S FLOWERS. 



cated rascal is the worst rascal of all. I have over eleven hun- 
dred students in my school, and I have often said that if I 
knew they were to turn out bad I wouldn't educate them. The 
idea that education is going to save! How would you save 
the drunkard? You reply, " I would tell him to assert his 
manhood." That is just what he has been doing for years. It 
hasn't helped him very much, has it? 

I once visited the grave of Cowden, a godly man who died 
more than a hundred years ago. On his tombstone are these 
words: "/ have sinned. I have repented. I have trusted. I 
have lived. I have died. I shall rise. I shall reign." Beauti- 
ful, are they not? We have all sinned. Won't you take the 
other step, repent? Do it now. 

I was in Colorado preaching the Gospel some time ago, 
and I heard something that touched my heart very much. 
The Governor of the State was passing through the prison, 
and in one cell he found a young man who had his window 
full of flowers that seemed to have been watched with tender 
care. The Governor looked at the prisoner and then at the 
flowers, and asked whose they were. 

" These are my flowers," said the poor convict. 

" Are you fond of flowers? " 

" Yes, sir." 

" How long have you been here? " 

He told him the number of years. He was sentenced for a 
long time. The Governor said : 

" What makes you so fond of flowers? " 

With much emotion he replied: 

" When I was a boy my mother used to have a good many 
flowers. But she died and I was left without a mother's care. 
As I water these flowers and care for them they remind of the 
days when I was at home and happy with her." 

The Governor was so much touched that he said: 

" Well, young man, if you think so much of your mother, 
I think you will appreciate your liberty," and he pardoned him 
then and there. 



A STUBBORN CHILD. 



573 



My sister told me her little boy said something naughty 
one morning. His father said to him: 

" Sammy, go and ask your mother's forgiveness." 

" I won't," replied the child. 

" If you don't ask your mother's forgiveness I'll put you 
to bed." 

It was early in the morning — before he went to business, 
and the boy didn't think he would do it. He said, " I won't " 
again. They undressed him and put him to bed. The father 
came home at noon expecting to find his boy playing about 
the house. He didn't see him around, and he asked his wife, 
where he was. 

" In bed still." 

So he went up to the room, and sat down by the bed, and 
said: 

" Sammy, I want you to ask your mother's forgiveness." 

But the answer was " I won't." The father coaxed and 
begged, but he could not induce the child to ask forgiveness. 
The father went away, expecting that when he came home at 
night the child would be over it. At night, however, he found 
the little fellow still in bed. He had lain there all clay. He 
tried to get him to go to his mother, but it was of no use. His 
mother tried and was equally unsuccessful. The father and 
mother could not sleep that night. Every moment they ex- 
pected to hear their little boy knock at their door. My sister 
told me it was just as if death had come into their home. She 
never passed through such a night. In the morning she went 
to the boy and said: 

" Now, Sammy, are you going to ask my forgiveness?" 

But he turned his face to the wall and wouldn't speak. 
The father came home at noon and the boy was as stubborn 
as ever. It looked as though he were going to conquer. The 
father went to his office, and late that afternoon my sister went 
to her boy and began to reason with him, and, after talking for 
some time, she said: 

" Now, Sammy, say ' mother.' " 



574 



THE WORDS SPOKEN. 



" Mother," said the boy. 

" Now say ' for.' " 

" For." 

" Now just say ' give.' ' And the boy repeated " give." 

" Me," said the mother. 

" Me," and the little fellow fairly leaped out of bed. " I 
have said it," he cried; " take me down to papa, so that I can 
say it to him." 

When I was in Glasgow a lady said to me, " You use the 
word ' take ' very frequently. Is there anything of that kind 
in the Bible? I can't find it. I think you must have manu- 
factured that word." Why, in the Bible it says: " The Spirit 
and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. 
And let him that is athirst, come. And whosoever will, let 
him take the water of life freely." I tell you if you are not 
saved it is because you won't be. You will not come unto 
Him that you may have life. The door hangs on that hinge. 
If you are willing to come to Christ, no power on earth 
can keep you away. To men who say they can't come I say 
be honest and put in the right word and say you won't come. 

I remember the first time I ever preached from the text 
" Let the wicked forsake his way, etc." I had selected an- 
other subject, but this text came to my mind and the Holy 
Spirit seemed to say, " Speak on that text to-night." I tried 
to dismiss it; I tried to get my mind on some other subject, 
but it was of no use; so I prepared a few thoughts, and went 
to the meeting. An excursion train had come in from the 
country, and among the excursionists was a Bible class of five 
young men. The teacher seated his class in front of me and 
offered a very earnest prayer, the burden of which was, " Oh, 
God, bless my class to-night." After I closed my sermon the 
spirit cf God was so powerfully at work among the congre- 
gation that I felt as though I could not let them go. There 
seemed to come a hush from heaven — you could almost 
hear men's hearts beating — and for five or ten minutes the 
audience seemed to be spellbound as I pleaded with them to 



A DREADFUL ACCIDENT. rye 

break with sin. Somehow I felt as though I was speaking to 
some whom I should never speak to again. Then we had an 
inquiry-meeting. Soon after I was at the hotel asleep, when 
I was awakened by an unusual noise in the building. My 
family were with me, and I was a little alarmed ; I thought per- 
haps the hotel was on fire. I hastily dressed and went down 
to the office, and, to my great horror, learned that the excur- 
sion train, while crossing a bridge, had gone down into the 
chasm beneath, and a good many of the people on that train 
were in eternity. I went back to my room, and said, " Thank 
God ! I pleaded with those people, with all the power I had, to 
break with sin." Those five young men were standing on 
the platform of the car, and while a gentleman was passing 
from one car to another a few minutes before the accident he 
heard them discussing whether they would give up sin or not. 
The bridge gave way and the five young men all entered 
eternity together. My dear friends, isn't it the safest, the 
wisest, and the best thing for every one of us to turn from 
sin now? 

THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

How John the Baptist got a crowd together I do not know. 
There were no newspapers in those days to herald his coming; 
he did not have any committee; he did not have a temple to 
preach in lighted by electric light; he did not have electric 
cars to bring the people in great crowds; he did not preach in 
great cities where many people live together. Almost any 
man can get a crowd, these days, if he has any reputation at 
all. John was not advertised as the Reverend John, nor as 
John LL.D. He had never been graduated from a theolog- 
ical seminary; he was a man without a title, a man without 
position. 

But I can imagine a few shepherds on the plains of Jordan 
looking after their sheep and goats, and a stranger coming 
towards them out of the desert clothed in raiment of earners 
hair bound with a leathern girdle. He got a few of those 
shepherds together — perhaps a dozen of them — and said: 
35 



576 THE PREACHING OF JOHN. 

" Set your houses in order, the King is just at the cloor! I do 
not know the day or the hour when He is coming, but I have 
been sent before Him to prepare the way. Repent ye; for 
the kingdom of Heaven is at hand." After he delivered his 
message he said to them, " I will be back to-morrow," and dis- 
appeared. 

Talk about a sensation! I tell you there was a sensation 
that time. They looked one at the other, and said: 

" Did you ever hear a man talk like that? " 

" No, I never heard a man talk like that." 

" Did you notice his coat of camel's hair? What if it 
should be Elijah ? " 

What name in all Jewish history could stir the heart of 
Israel like that name? 

The shepherds spread the news — it didn't require news- 
papers to do that up and down the Valley of the Jordan — 
and the next day what a greeting John had! Again the voice 
rang up and down the Valley of Jordan, " Repent! for the 
kingdom of Heaven is at hand ! " What a thrill went through 
the land! 

I think John was one of the most wonderful men that ever 
lived. He had a message to deliver, and it came from the 
heart, red-hot with the love of God, and the message was on 
fire. How the sparks flew in all directions! If there had been 
a newspaper reporter there he would have been converted right 
away, and wouldn't have written out the sermon at all. I 
haven't any doubt there were some old croakers there who 
said it was a " sensation." I wouldn't give a snap for a man 
who couldn't create a sensation. I would to God another 
John the Baptist would appear. 

There will never come before us a question so important as 
this great question of eternal life. Under the preaching of 
John the Baptist, under the preaching of Jesus Christ, many 
came near to the kingdom of God, and yet they missed it just 
as men and women are missing it to-day. 

Before I left home I was one day working in a field in com- 



FIGHTING AGAINST CONVICTION. 



577 



pany with a neighbor named Long, who lived close by, and all 
at once I noticed that he was crying and wiping his eyes. I 
asked " What is the matter? " Then he told me the strangest 
story I had ever heard in my life. He said that when he left 
home his mother gave him her own Bible, saying, " My son, 
' Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and 
all these things shall be added unto you.' ' : He said if it 
hadn't been her Bible he would have thrown it away, but it 
had that text written upon the fly leaf by his mother's own 
hand and he kept it. It was her favorite text, and he had often 
heard her repeat it. His great object in life was to make 
money enough to come back and buy a farm in that town. He 
got the notion into his head that he could make money a good 
deal faster if he didn't have anything to do with the church or 
Christian people. He went from town to town seeking work, 
and when he finally found it he went to church, because, he 
said, his father and mother used to make him go until he got 
in the habit of it. He hadn't been going a great while before 
he heard the minister preach from the text " Seek ye first the 
kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things 
shall be added unto you." " Why," he said, " I wonder if 
mother hasn't written to that minister to preach from that 
text! " It seemed to him that the minister was very personal, 
and he was a good deal moved ; but he said to himself, " when 
I get settled in life I will attend to my soul; I am going to 
make money now." But for days the question troubled him. 
After awhile he got out of work in that town, and went to an- 
other place and to another church, where he soon heard the 
minister preaching from that same text. He hadn't written 
home to his mother that he had gone to another town, and she 
didn't know he was there, so he thought, " Where did that 
minister get hold of anything about me?" He did not know 
that it was because God's Spirit was striving with him ; but he 
promised himself " When I get a home of my own. and get 
married and am settled down, I will attend to my soul." He 
went to a third town, and to a third church, and the minister 



cyS THE MADMAN'S MESSAGE. 

preached from that same text. It troubled him; he thought 
it must be in answer to his mother's prayers; it seemed as if 
she followed him from place to place, for he continually heard 
that text ringing in his soul, but he deliberately said to him- 
self, " I will have nothing to do with this matter until I get 
settled in life." " Now," he said to me, " I go to church every 
Sunday, but I have never heard another sermon that touched 
me." 

I was rather wild myself in those days, and his story made 
me feel very uncomfortable, and I changed the subject, and we 
talked about something else. Soon afterwards I went to 
Boston and was converted, and you know that when a man 
is converted he thinks if God converted him he can convert 
anybody; I thought if I was converted my neighbor Long 
might be converted. When I returned home some years after, 
I said to my mother: 

" Is Long living on his old place yet? " 

" Is he living? " she said, " Didn't I write you about him? " 

" Write me what? " I answered. 

" Why, he lost his mind and was taken to an institution in 
Brattleboro. If any of the neighbors call to see him, he points 
his finger at them and says, ' Seek ye first the kingdom of 
God.' " 

The next summer he was at home, so the doctor and I 
drove to his house, and as I stepped up to the door I said: 

" Mr. Long, do you remember me? " 

I thought he was going to shake hands; but, instead of 
that, he pointed his finger at me and said: 

" Young man, ' Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His 
righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.' ' : 

I talked about matters that he and I used to know about, 
but while his mind was a perfect blank on these things, the 
text that his mother gave him, and the text that the Holy 
Ghost gave him, was still there. 

The next time I returned home he was in his grave, within 
a few yards of the spot where my father and youngest brother 



FALL OF THE PEMBERTON MILL. 



579 



were buried. As I looked over to Long's grave it seemed as 
if I could hear the text coming up from it, " Seek ye first the 
kingdom of God, and His righteousness ; and all these things 
shall be added unto you." I never go to that cemetery that 
I don't look over to Long's grave. I believe that the greatest 
mistake that he ever made in all the years that he was on this 
earth was that he didn't give himself up to be led by the Spirit 
of God. 

I knew of a young man who wanted to become a Christian, 
whose father was a worldly man, full of ambition and a desire 
to make his way in the world. His son went to him and told 
him his wish. The father turned around in astonishment, and 
said: " My son, you are making a mistake. You had better 
wait until you get established in business; wait till you are 
older; wait till you make some money; there is plenty of time 
yet to become a Christian." Does any young man believe 
that? 

You may neglect to repent one day too long. God com- 
mands you to do it now. We have got to enter through the 
door of repentance into the kingdom of God. There is no 
other way. The high and the low, the rich and the poor, have 
all got to go in the same way — on their hands and knees. 

I had a friend during the Chicago fire who became so stifled 
with smoke that he lay down to die. But as he lay on the 
ground he got beneath the smoke and crawled out on his hands 
and knees. I tell you when a man gets on his knees and says, 
" God be merciful to me, a sinner,'' God will forgive him and 
bless him. And so if there is anyone that wants to be saved 
let him say, " God helping me, I will turn my face toward 
heaven ; " and, if need be, God will send legions of angels to 
help him. 

A number of years ago the great Pemberton Mill at Law- 
rence, Mass., fell. There was only one room left entire, and 
in it were imprisoned twenty-five or thirty operatives, mostly 
young girls. All business was suspended, and everybody 
went to work with a will with shovels and picks and crowbars 



58o 



GOING HOME. 



to set them free. Night came on, and they had not reached 
them. By some mischance a lantern broke; there was an ex- 
plosion of gas, and the ruins caught fire. They tried to put 
cut the fire, but did not succeed. They could talk with the 
imprisoned ones, and even pass refreshments to them and 
encourage them to keep up. But alas! the flames drew nearer 
and nearer. Superhuman were the efforts made to rescue 
them; the men bravely fought back the flames; but the fire 
gained fresh strength and returned to claim its victims. Then 
piercing shrieks arose when the spectators saw that the efforts 
of the firemen were hopeless. The young girls realized their 
fate, and they knelt clown and began to sing the hymn we all 
were taught in our Sunday-school days: 

" Let others seek a home below, 
Which flames devour and waves o'erflow. 
I'm going home, I'm going home, 
I'm going home to die no more." 

The flames had now reached them; they sank, one by one; 
a few T moments more and the fire circled around them, and 
their souls w r ere taken into the bosom of Christ. Yes, let 
others seek a home below, if they will, but " Seek ye first the 
kingdom of God," with all your heart. 

Note. — On the tenth of January, i860, a defective pillar in the Pemberton 
Mill gave way, and, without a moment's warning, the whole structure fell. 
Seven hundred operatives, many of them young girls and women, were caught 
in the ruins. Of these, eighty-eight were killed, and one hundred and thirty- 
four injured, a number of whom subsequently died. The number of those 
who perished in the flames is not positively known. — [Ed. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

SOCIAL AND WORLDLY AMUSEMENTS. 

The Boy Who Shunned His Father — " Oh, He Is An Old Fogy " — 
Marrying a Man to Convert Him — Tottering Homes and Blasted 
Lives — Where Sorrow and Disaster Thrive — The Banker and 
His Dishonest Partners — Dying of a Broken Heart — Northfield 
Boys and Early Apples — Straddling the Fence — An Incident of 
the Civil War — Putting Up the Wrong Flag — The Converted 
Man Who Wouldn't Give Up Anything — Is it Right to Dance? — 
Shall I Go To The Theater? — " This Is No Place for Me " — 
" Don't Make a Fool of Yourself " — Distilling Whiskey for the 
Glory of God — "Come, Moody, Let's Have a Game" — Card 
Parties — " Chutter, Chutter, Chutter " — " The Man that Comes 
here Sundays " — Footprints in the Snow. 

A FATHER told me that once after he had been away 
from home his wife and children were filled with joy 
on his return. But one boy was missing, and the 
father looked around and said, "Where is John?" The boy 
had gone into the fields, and the father went out to find him; 
and it turned out that he had been very disobedient while his 
father was away. That was the reason why the boy did not 
wish to see him. It is the first impulse of every one of us when 
we do wrong to get as far away from God as we can. If a 
child has wronged his parents he doesn't want to see them. 

How many in our great cities break the Sabbath and dis- 
regard the sanctuary, and then wonder why they have so much 
trouble and so much sorrow. There's no wonder about it! 
There's no mystery about it! Isn't the truth plain? Hasn't 
God warned? Hasn't He said that He will turn the way of 
the wicked upside down? Hasn't the King of Heaven de- 
creed that the wicked shall not prosper? If you lightly esteem 

(581) 



$82 TRUTH NEVER GROWS OLD. 

His Word, and His statutes, He will lightly esteem you, and 
you can't expect His blessing. 

People talk about the Bible being old, and say, " it was 
good enough for the dark ages, but we can get on very well 
without it." Why don't you say the same about the sun? 
The sun is old! When you build a house, why do you put 
any windows in? Why don't you put in electric light? That 
is new! The sun is too old; it is worn out! Well, it was good 
enough for the fathers, but you want something new. Let us 
throw the sun away with the old Bible; if you are going to 
throw the Bible away, let the two go together. Truth is just 
as good to-day as it has ever been. It is in its youth; truth 
never grows old; take the Word of God and live according to 
its teachings, and let that be your guide, and it will save you 
from ten thousand pitfalls. Men close the Bible and then run 
off to things just contrary to its teachings, and then they get 
into trouble and say that the Christian life isn't what they 
thought it was; that they have found out that the way is hard 
and difficult. 

I honestly believe that what we want to-day is somebody 
who will go through the land with a voice like a trumpet to 
call the church of God out of the world. The church and the 
world have got so mixed up that the lines are obliterated. 
When any one tries to draw the line, people say: 

" Oh, he is an old fogy; you don't want anything to do 
with that man; he belongs to the past ages; that was good 
enough theology ages ago, but it won't do nowadays. People 
have gotten out of the dark ages, and the world is so cultured 
now that there isn't much difference between the world and 
the church; they are pretty near alike. When the Lord said, 
' Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers,' He 
didn't mean anything by it. Of course we won't swear, and 
get drunk, and all that; that is what it means; it doesn't mean 
that a godly woman shan't marry an ungodly man. No, let 
a godly, sainted woman marry a godless, Christless man, and 
see if she can't convert him! " 



A COMMON DELUSION. 



583 



I have heard many a woman say, " When I was married I 
thought I could lead my husband and be the means of his 
conversion. He drank some, but he promised me when we 
were married that he would give it up. He didn't get drunk 
on our wedding trip, but he was drunk very soon after." 
There is many a mother whose life is as dark as hell, and many 
a family that has been wrecked because a woman went directly 
against the word of God. 

It is not for you, young people, who have not seen as much 
of life and the world as some others, to dispute this. You can 
see it is plain. There is not a mother that would not feel badly 
to have a daughter marry a man who would abuse her and 
make her life wretched. There is not a father who would not be 
made miserable by such a probability. Do you suppose God 
does not feel it to have one of His sons or daughters marry 
an unregenerate and unconverted person who hates Him and 
would misrepresent and abuse Him? You say, "Yes, but I 
shall influence my husband after we are married." Well, in- 
fluence him before you are married. 

The most subtle and deceitful hope which ever existed, and 
one which has wrecked the happiness of many a young girl's 
life, is the common delusion that a woman can best reform a 
man by marrying him. It is a mystery to me how people can 
be so blind to the hundreds of cases in every community where 
homes have fallen and innocent lives have been wrecked be- 
cause some young girl has persisted in marrying a scoundrel 
in the hope of saving him. I have never known such a union, 
and I have seen hundreds of them, result in anything but sor- 
row and disaster. " Be ye not unequally yoked together with 
unbelievers." Some men say that such a Union is easy. Sup- 
pose that a club is formed of a hundred members, and seventy- 
five of them are unbelievers, and twenty-five are believers, and 
they want to get me in. I join it, and by and by they vote to 
have an excursion on the Sabbath. Where is D. L. Moody 
then? Where is my influence then? No child of God can 
identify himself with unbelievers without getting into trouble. 



5 8 4 



PARTNERSHIP WITH THE UNGODLY. 



A banker once came to me in great distress and said his 
two partners in business had made up their minds to do a very 
disreputable thing that would compromise his Christian char- 
acter, and he was greatly agitated over it. I asked: 

"Will you tell me when you formed that partnership?" 

" Five years ago." 

" How long have you been a Christian?" 

" Twenty-five years." 

" And you took these ungodly men into partnership with 
you; did you read what the Bible says about that? " 

" Well," he said, "I thought I could make money faster, 
and have more to give to the Lord." 

When godly men yoke themselves up with ungodly men 
because they can make money faster, they are sure to get into 
trouble. I told him he had tied himself to two ungodly men 
and he was going to suffer. And he did suffer. To-day his 
testimony is gone and his influence has been swept away. 
How many partnerships there are in that condition, the part- 
ners bound by a written contract drawn by a lawyer ! A good 
many people think they are going to make more by forming 
ungodly alliances; but you can't find a case in the Bible where 
a man ever made anything by selling his principles; not one 
who did not lose by going against the word of God. 

When an ungodly man offers his hand to a godly woman, 
and she accepts it because he is rich, the curse of God is upon 
that woman. I never knew of two people being yoked to- 
gether in that way who did not wreck their families and lead 
miserable, wretched lives. For a godly man to marry a god- 
less, Christless woman is to make their home and lives dark 
and dreary; but for a godly, consecrated Christian minister to 
marry a woman that sneers at Christ, the Bible, and Chris- 
tianity is shocking; it is downright sin; and I hope by and by 
the sentiment of the church will be so strong against it that 
ministers won't marry such women. A godly man has no 
right to ask a godless woman for her hand, and a godless man 
has no right to ask a godly woman for her heart and hand. 



ON THE BORDER LAND. 



585 



A lady in Chicago was very much offended with me for 
telling her that she ought not to marry a godless husband. 
That was not long after I started to preach. Her life was 
blasted, and she died of a broken heart. Her husband was 
very angry because I preached a sermon on that subject, but 
he lived long enough to know that I was right. His life was 
wretched, and her life was wretched ; and the children when 
they started out in life didn't know where to go. Think of 
children in homes like that ! 

There is a class of people who think they can live just on 
the border of the world and be constantly slipping over into 
the world. They want to make the most of this world; they 
think that is the highest type of Christianity. I think it is the 
lowest type! I remember when I was a boy in Northfield 
there was an apple tree right near the old red schoolhouse that 
bore the earliest kind of apples, and when they were ripe they 
always turned red. The tree grew on the other side of a fence, 
but some of the boughs hung over the road. It was an un- 
written law in that town that anything that hung over the road 
was public property. We boys would watch, and the moment 
we saw a streak of red we would get that apple, for fear some 
other boy would get it. I never got a ripe apple off that tree. 
It got more clubbings and had more broken boughs than any 
other tree in town, because it was a border tree. These border 
Christians get more clubbings than all the rest put together; 
they are clubbed by the church, and clubbed by the world. 
The world doesn't have any confidence in them, nor the church 
either, and they don't have much confidence in themselves. I 
don't see why so many want to be border Christians; the best 
thing you can do is to get as far away from the border as 
you can. 

During the Civil War some of those people who lived in 
border cities didn't know just on which side to jump; they 
had friends in the South and friends in the North, and they 
didn't want to go with either side; so they straddled the fence. 
When the Southern army came, these people shouted them- 



586 



THE WRONG FLAG. 



selves hoarse for the South; and when the Northern army 
came, they did the same thing for the North. Some of them 
went too far and got two flags; when they saw the Union army 
coming, up went the stars and stripes; and when they saw the 
Confederate army coming, up went the stars and bars. One 
day a boy put out his flag, and the family forgot to take it in; 
it was the wrong flag for the next army, and when the soldiers 
came, what did they do? Why, they just burned their build- 
ings — burned them all up. You don't think much of a man 
who is on both sides of the fence; who is trying to live for the 
world and be counted for God. It is a good deal better, if you 
want power and peace, to come out on the Lord's side. 

People come to me and say, " Mr. Moody, what do you 
think about this amusement or that amusement?" I will tell 
you what I think: if it interrupts your communication with 
God, give it up. Men are all the time taking false steps, be- 
cause they are not willing to be led by the Spirit. Do you 
think that so many men would go to ruin if they would let the 
Spirit lead them? The question of public amusements often 
comes up and it is frequently asked, " Is it right to dance? " 
All I have to say is, if the Spirit of God says dance, then 
dance. Give Christians something better to do and they won't 
want dancing. When my eldest son was a little boy he was 
very fond of getting hold of the scissors to play with ; and his 
mother was afraid that he would dig his eyes out, or get hurt in 
some way. One day he was playing with them, when his sister 
saw him and tried to take them away ; but he only held on to 
them the tighter. Then she ran, got an orange, and held it up, 
saying, " Willie, want an orange ? " and he dropped those scis- 
sors in a minute. So with dancing Christians ; they will always 
go for the better thing. If a dancing Christian isn't quite sure 
whether it is right or wrong to dance, just let him give Christ 
the benefit of the doubt. Let him pray over it; and if he has 
any doubt then, give it up. 

A Christian mother said she wanted her son to go to a 
dancing school because he was so awkward ; she wanted him to 



GUIDED BY THE SPIRIT. q87 

be more graceful, — wanted him to get grace in his heels, you 
•see, instead of his heart. After six weeks he had made such 
poor progress that she took him out of the school in disgust 
and chided him. Said he : 

" I'm sorry, mother, I'm so stupid about it, but I can't do 
any better. You see, it's one of the things I can't pray over." 

You couldn't conceive of Paul dancing. The idea of Noah 
dancing and playing cards in the ark, while the world was 
perishing! The world is perishing now, as much as it was 
then. Let the Spirit of God be your teacher, and you will see 
what is right and what is wrong. Men say, " Is it consistent 
for me to go to the theater? " Christ's principle is that you 
are to give yourself up to the Spirit of the Word. Then you 
will be guided aright and make no mistake. 

A man once told me that he had been converted, but he 
said he hadn't given up anything, and wasn't going to give up 
anything. He afterwards told me he went to the theater, but 
he didn't stay there, for he had no desire to; that he couldn't 
read novels, for he had lost his taste for them. The reason 
was simple. When a man is filled with the Spirit he will cease 
to love many things he once did; his love will be turned into 
another channel. Men say that they can't give up this thing 
or that. Let the Spirit of God get into their hearts, and they 
can. They can't do it themselves, but God can do it for them. 
The teaching of the Word is that if you take the Spirit of God 
it will enlighten you and cast out darkness. 

A lady came to me, in a city where I was preaching a few 
years ago, and said: 

" I wish you would tell me how to become a Christian; but 
I want to be honest with you, — I don't want to become one 
of your kind." 

" Why," I asked, " have I got any peculiar kind of Chris- 
tianity?" 

" Well," she said, " I want to be a Christian, but I don't 
want to give up the theater." 

" I have been preaching here six months, and one news- 



$$$ A THEATER-GOER. 

paper has been giving a verbatim report of my sermons every 
day; have you seen a word from me about theaters?" 

" Why, no." 

" I have seen you at our meetings frequently in the after- 
noon, have you heard me say anything about theaters?" 

" No, I haven't." 

" Well, will you tell me what you brought that subject 
up for? " 

" Why," she said, " I didn't suppose you believed in the 
theater." 

" What right have you to think that of me? " 

" I don't know; do you ever go to the theater? " 

" No, I never was in a theater in my life, only to preach." 

"Why don't you go?" 

" Because I have no taste for it, I have no desire for the 
theater; I have got something better. I would rather be the 
instrument in God's hands of leading you into the peace and 
joy that I have found in Christ Jesus than have anything else 
in all the world. There is no joy like it." 

" Well," she said, " I can't understand that." 

" No, I am sure you can't; therefore I will talk to you about 
something you can understand;" and I talked about Jesus 
Christ. After a while she said: 

"Well, Mr. Moody, I do think His character is lovely; 
when you preached last night my heart was just breaking be- 
cause I do love Him, and I want to be His; but I don't want 
to give up the theater." 

" Let us talk about Christ," I said, and I got her back 
again to talk about Him. By and by she said: 

" If I become a Christian, can I go to the theater? " 

" Yes," I said, " if you can go with the glory of God in 
view, you can go to the theater all you want to." 

" Well, I have made up my mind that I will be a Christian 
if I can only go to the theater." 

" My good woman," I said, " let Christ have the first place 
in your heart, and he will regulate all your life." 



"THIS IS NO PLACE FOR ME." rgg 

After prayer she wiped her tears away, and said: 

" The burden is gone. I really believe I have been con- 
verted. But I am not going to give up the theater." 

" I am sorry you have brought that up again," I said. She 
was going out of town, and as she shook hands and bade me 
good bye, she said: 

" I am going to the theater, after all." 

Not long afterwards she came to me and said: 

" Mr. Moody, I understand it all now." 

" How is that? " I said. 

" Well, you know my father is a doctor, and has a large 
practice, and very little recreation, and he used to take us to 
the theater more than to the church. My husband is a lawyer, 
and he gets so tired during the day that he wants to go to the 
theater at night for rest and amusement, and so we have a box 
in a leading theater. The other night we had company, and 
my husband was very anxious to go, and I went; I never 
thought of anything wrong. Somehow or other, when the 
curtain lifted everything seemed different, and I said, ' This is 
no place for me.' Then my husband said, ' Don't make a fool 
of yourself; it is said all around that you have been to the 
Moody meetings and been converted, and if you go out it will 
be the talk of fashionable society.' I said, ' I think I have 
made a fool of myself all my life,' and I got up and went out. 
The theater hadn't changed, but I had changed." 

I would rather have one night in an after-meeting and be 
used of God to lead a poor drunkard away from his cups and 
send him home to be a comfort and a blessing to his wife and 
family than to attend all the theaters in the world! If I am 
conscious of anything that will injure my testimony or weaken 
my influence, or hinder me from doing God's work, I will give 
it up at once. The idea of my sitting down to discuss for one 
minute the question whether I will give up worldly things for 
the luxury and the joy of being a co-worker with God! The 
idea of a child of God sitting down and discussing whether he 
shall give up this or that thing which will interfere with his 



590 



DO ALL TO THE GLORY OF GOD. 



Christian life! My dear friends, Jesus laid down no rules, but 
He laid down great principles. If you love Him, you will 
love to please Him, and that is all there is to it. 

I was once in a town in England where they made more 
whiskey than in any other place in the country; the smell of 
whiskey pervaded the whole place; the very air was charged 
with whiskey. There was a young man there who had a large 
distillery which had been left to him by his father. I came out 
against the whiskey business the best I knew how. The young 
man came to see me and said he wanted to square his life in 
accordance with the word of God, and that if I would show 
him just one passage of Scripture which condemned making 
whiskey he would give it up. I said, " I can give you a good 
many, but here is one: ' Whether, therefore, ye eat, or drink, 
or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.' If you can 
distill whiskey for the glory of God, keep right on distilling 
whiskey! " I should like to see a distiller make a hundred 
barrels of whiskey and then get down and pray that it might 
be a blessing to anybody that would drink it! I asked him if 
he ever heard of a whiskey manufacturer praying over his 
business? 

If you are invited to go to questionable places, ask your- 
self, " Can I pray if I go there? " If you can pray over it, go; 
if you can't pray over it, keep out of it. 

You may have grand precepts, but if they are against 
your living they are of no use to you. If a mother is mourn- 
ing over her son because he is a gambler, and that mother 
played cards with him at home, is any one to blame but herself? 
When I was a commercial traveler I didn't know one card from 
another; I was thrown in with other commercial travelers, and 
they would frequently say to me, " Come, Moody, let's have 
a game.'' And I would reply, " I don't know how to play." 
Thank God, I did not; that was a grand help to me, and I say 
it will be a grand help to your boys if they don't know one 
card from the other. If you teach your boys to play at home 
just for amusement, they may by and by play with one an- 



SHALL WE LOSE INFLUENCE? 50,1 

other for cigarettes, and then for money. There is many a 
home where the mother has given her boy his first start down 
hill by playing cards with him. If you have card parties, I 
advise you, as Christian people, to open them with prayer. 
Isn't that good advice? What do you say? Just open them 
with prayer, and then if the prayer won't go, the cards 
won't go. 

I know some foolish people that say, " If we give up all 
these things we will lose our influence over the world." I 
never knew it to work that way. A lady once said to me: 

" My husband said he would go to church every Sunday 
with me if I would go to the theater with him; I thought it 
would be a good thing to get him to attend church, and so I 
went to the theater with him." 

" Well," I said, " how has it worked? " 

" Oh," she said, " it hasn't worked at all; he doesn't have 
the same respect for my religion that he did before I yielded; 
I let down my principles, and he suddenly lost his respect for 
me. He doesn't go to church at all; he wants me to go to 
church, but he won't go with nie. Not only that, but I have 
been losing ground right along, and I am a good deal farther 
from the kingdom of God than when I married him." 

That is the same story all over the world. The mirth that 
cheers the worldly will freeze a true child of God. 

A friend of mine had a beautiful canary bird that was a 
very sweet singer. The spring came, and he thought it was 
a pity to keep the bird in the house, so he put it out under a 
tree. Before he knew it a lot of English sparrows came 
around, — and you know they can't sing any more than I can. 
They just chutter, chutter, chutter, chutter; and before he knew 
it his little canary had lost all its sweet notes. As soon as he 
found it out he took him back into the house. He bought 
another bird — a fine singer — and put the two together to 
see if his canary wouldn't get back its sweet notes; but it never 
sang quite as sweetly as it did before it got in with those 
sparrows. That is about the condition of the church; nine 
36 



592 



DRIFTING AWAY. 



out of ten professing Christians simply chutter, chutter, chutter, 
chutter, talk, talk, talk, talk. They don't say anything. No 
power. No consecrated life back of their words. Professing 
what they don't possess. Some men live skim milk and talk 
cream. It is better to live cream and talk skim milk. May 
God tell us each how to get into sweet fellowship with Him, 
and have power with God and man. 

We don't walk uprightly. I believe that is the reason why 
the blessing is withheld. Many a mother is weeping over a 
son who has gone to ruin, and many a father is overwhelmed 
with shame by the conduct of his children. Once when I was 
on the Pacific coast I was entertained at a friend's home, and 
the father said to me: 

" I have three sons who bear my name, and they are a dis- 
grace to me; I am ashamed of them." 

He was just beginning to taste the bitterness from the seed 
he had been sowing for years. He had lived a worldly life and 
been identified with many things outside of his home, and the 
reaping time came while he was giving his attention to clubs, 
politics, and such things. Soon the boys came in and I got 
acquainted with them, and I found that they had drifted right 
away from their father. 

One day the father stepped into a room with me and locked 
the door and said: 

" Mr. Moody, I want to talk with you a little." And then 
he began to weep. He had a beautiful home, and his sur- 
roundings seemed to be unusually pleasant. He said: 

" I have three sons, and all of them have gone to ruin. I 
don't know why it is that God has dealt so severely with me." 

I had been in the house for some time and had been 
watching things a little, and I said: 

"Will you allow me to ask a few questions?" 

" Certainly." 

"Where do you spend Monday night?" 

" Oh, I am a member of the Common Council; I am at the 
Council meetings Monday nights as a city officer." He was 



A NEGLECTFUL FATHER. 593 

then trying to be elected mayor of the city, and he had been 
fishing for the office for years. 

"Where do you spend Tuesday night?" 

" I go down to the Young People's meetings; I am senior 
deacon, and I feel that I ought to attend those meetings." 

" Well," I said, " strike out Tuesday night. Where are 
you Wednesday night?" He hesitated, but finally said: 

" I am a Mason." 

It turned out that he was at a Masonic lodge every 
Wednesday night. So we struck out Wednesday night. 

" Where are you Thursday night? " 

" I am always at home on Thursday night." 

' You are a public man, a popular man, and you are trying 
to be elected mayor of the city. I suppose you have political 
calls evenings? " 

"Oh, yes!" 

" How about Friday night? " 

" Friday night is our regular prayer-meeting night, and I 
always go there." 

" Well, strike out Friday night. Where are you Saturday 
night? " 

" Oh, Saturday night I am always at home." 

:c Yes, I noticed you were last Saturday night, and I saw 
that you went into your room and locked yourself in to get 
your Sunday-school lesson. So we will strike out Saturday 
night. On Sunday night where are you?" 

" I am always at the church service." 

" Well," I said, " we will strike out Sunday night. The 
nights are all gone, and that has been your life all these years 
while your boys have been going to ruin. I notice in the 
morning the boys are in a hurry, and you are in a hurry, and 
when the boys went to school they couldn't stop to prayers. 
Sometimes you have family worship, and sometimes you don't; 
sometimes you have it alone, and sometimes some of the chil- 
dren arc there. You don't come home to lunch, you have a 
late dinner, and sometimes you see your children only at 



594 MAKE HOME A PLEASANT PLACE. 

dinner time. That is all you see of them. Is it any wonder 
that your boys have gone wrong? You have been trying to 
be a good man, but you have looked after other people's vine- 
yards, and have not taken care of your own. You have been 
giving your time to the public, to the church, to politics, and 
secret societies, and Satan has walked right in under your eyes 
and taken your children. They don't care for you; they don't 
know much about you; they are boys that you don't know; is 
anyone to blame but yourself? You are like a commercial 
traveler whose boy came into the house crying and said: 
'Mamma, that man struck me.' 'What man?' said the 
mother. ' That man that comes here Sundays.' ' Oh, your 
father? ' ' Yes.' He called his own father ' that man.' I 
would, if I were you, let the mayor's office go and try to save 
the boys." 

There are a good many families like that, and the parents 
wonder why their boys go astray. My friends, if we would 
just make home beautiful, and make it attractive, and give up 
some nights in the week to it, we might save our children. 

I believe in amusements, anything that is healthy; anything 
that is not going to harm them when they go out into the 
world. Make home the pleasantest place under the sun, and 
I don't believe that our children will leave us; I believe we 
are going to have them with us in glory. Talk about the 
"heathen Chinee!" The sons treat the fathers and mothers 
in China a thousand times better than the sons treat their 
parents in America to-day. Let a boy there treat his mother 
as boys in America treat their mothers and they would drive 
him out of town. They would say that any town that harbors 
such a monster as that ought to be swept out of existence. 

I tell you a disciple in the world is one thing, but the world 
in a disciple is quite a different thing. It is all right to have 
the ship in the water, but when the water gets into the ship you 
want to get out, don't you? I was very comfortable on my 
voyage home to my family on board the steamer Spree* while 



Incident related on page 339. 



THE PATH THROUGH THE SNOW 595 

the water was outside the boat; but when a hole was made in 
the bottom and the ship began to sink, so that w T e were afraid 
it was going down, we wanted to get off. That is what is the 
matter with Christians; they get water-logged and have to be 
towed. We waited forty-eight hours before we saw a steamer 
coming to tow us into Boston, and when it started to take us 
into port there was a joyful time, although we had to be towed 
in. There are lots of Christians that have to be towed in, and 
the ministers have all they can do to keep them from sinking. 
Once I walked across a field after a fresh fall of snow. I 
tried to see how straight a line I could make with my foot- 
prints in the snow. When I looked around to see how straight 
a path I was making I always walked crooked; but if I kept 
my eyes on the mark ahead of me and did not take them off I 
could walk straight enough. So if Christians would only keep 
their eyes on the mark — on Christ Jesus, and follow His foot- 
steps, not turning around to see what kind of a path they have 
made — they w 7 ould walk straighter. He is our model. In- 
stead of asking, Why can't I dance? why can't I go to the 
theater? why can't I do this or that? put it in this way: 
What is the use of it? Will it make me a better Christian? 
If it won't, then I won't do it. Instead of asking, " What is the 
use? " and " Why can't I? " ask if it will be for the honor and 
glory of Jesus, and if it will not, say " I will not do it." 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

AN APPEAL TO PARENTS. 

A Theory that Proved to be All Wrong — " Mother Is Not In" — 
Social Lies — Formation of Character — From the Sunday-school 
to Beer Gardens — Reaping the Consequences — " How Did You 
Come Here?" — Mr Moody's Secret — In Prison Under an 
Assumed Name — Moving in the " Highest Circles " — A Broken- 
hearted Mother — " Cut It Finer" — Looking Upon Sunday with 
Dread — " Natural Goodness " — The Lighthouse Keeper Watch- 
ing for the Return of His Sailor Son — A Grief-stricken Father — 
Removing His Mother's Body — A Remarkable Story — "Have 
You Seen My Boy?" — Story of the Little Wooden Cross — A 
Mother's Letter to Mr. Moody — People Who Strap Their 
Burdens Tighter on Their Backs. 

I USED to think when I was a Sunday-school superintendent, 
laboring among the children, and trying to get parents in- 
terested in the work, that if I ever became a preacher I 
would have but one text and one sermon, and they should be 
addressed to parents ; because when we get them interested 
their interest will be apparent in their children. We used to 
say, if we get the lambs in the old sheep will follow, but I didn't 
find that to be the case. Although we got the children inter- 
ested on Sunday, the parents would sometimes pull the other 
way all the week, and before Sunday came again the impression 
that had been made would be gone. 

The Bible precept, " teach them diligently," is very plain, 
and if we want our children to grow up a blessing to the church 
of God and to the world we must teach them. I can imagine 
some one saying : " It is all very well for Moody to lay down 
theories, but there are a great many difficulties in the way of 
carrying them out." I once heard of a minister who had a 

(596) 



TEACHING UNTRUTHFULNESS. 



597 



grand theory upon the bringing up of children ; but after God 
had given him seven children he found that his theory was all 
wrong. They all were differently constituted. I will admit 
that this is one difficulty ; but if our heart is set upon having 
our children in glory, God will give us all the light we need. 
He is not going to leave us in darkness. If that is not the 
aim of your heart, make it so. I would rather leave my chil- 
dren in the hope of Christ than leave them millions of money. 

Never teach them revenge. If a baby falls down on the 
floor, don't give it something with which to strike the floor. 
They have enough of revenge in them without being taught 
any more. Don't teach them to lie. How many a mother 
has told a child to go to the door, when she did not want to see 
the visitor, and say, " Mother is not in." That is a lie. Chil- 
dren are keen to detect. They very soon see those lies, and this 
lays the foundation for a good deal of trouble afterward. 

" Ah," some may say, " I never do that." Well, suppose a 
person comes in whom you don't want to see. You give him 
a welcome, and when he is ready to go you entreat him to 
stay ; but the moment he is out of the door you say, " What a 
bore ! " The children wonder at first, but they very soon begin 
to imitate their parents. Parents never ought to do a thing 
they don't want their children to do. If you don't want them 
to smoke, don't you smoke ; if you don't want them to chew, 
don't you chew; if you don't want them to drink, don't you 
drink. 

A lady told me that once when she was in her pantry the 
doorbell rang, and as she whirled round to go to the door she 
broke a tumbler. Her little girl was standing beside her, and 
she thought her mother was doing a very correct thing; and 
the moment the mother left the pantry, the child began to break 
all the tumblers she could get hold of. You may laugh, but 
children are very good imitators. If you don't want them to 
break the Sabbath day, keep it holy yourself; if you want them 
to go to church, go to church yourself. It is very often from 
imitation that they utter their first oath, or tell their first lie, 



598 where are the children? 

and then the habit grows upon them ; and when they try to 
break the habit, it has grown so strong that they cannot do it. 

" Ah," some say, " we don't believe in children being con- 
verted. Let them grow up to manhood and womanhood, 
and it will be time enough then to talk of converting them." 
They forget that in the meantime their characters are formed, 
and when they have arrived at manhood and womanhood it is 
often too late to alter them. 

How many parents know where their sons are evenings? 
They may be in haunts of vice. Where does your son spend 
his evenings? You don't care enough for him to ascertain 
what kind of company he keeps, what kind of books he reads ; 
don't care if he is reading miserable, trashy novels, and getting 
false ideas of life. You don't know till it is too late. While 
we were in London, an army officer in India said to himself: 
" Lord, now is the time for my son to be saved." He got a 
furlough, and came to London. God was not going to let him 
return without the blessing. How many fathers are interested 
enough in their sons to do as he did? How many parents stand 
in the way of the salvation of their children? I don't know of 
anything that discouraged me more when I was a Sunday- 
school superintendent in Chicago, than when, after begging 
parents to allow their children to come to Sunday-school — 
and how few of them came — those parents, whenever spring 
arrived, would take their children from the school and lead 
them into German beer-gardens. And how many reaped the 
consequences ! 

I remember one mother who heard that her boy was im- 
pressed at our meetings. She said her son was a good enough 
boy, and he didn't need to be converted. I pleaded with her, 
but in vain. I tried my influence with the boy ; but while I was 
pulling one way the mother was pulling the other. Her in- 
fluence prevailed. Naturally, it would. Well, some time after 
I visited the county jail, and I saw him a prisoner there. 

" How did you come here? " I asked ; " Does your mother 
know where you are ? " 



xMISTAKEN MOTHERS. egg 

"No, please don't tell her; I am here under an assumed 
name, and I am sentenced for four years. Do not let my 
mother know of this," he pleaded ; " she thinks 1 am in the 
army." 

I used to call on that mother, afterwards, but I had promised 
her boy that I would not tell her where he was, and for four 
years she mourned him as dead. She thought he had died 
on the battlefield, or in a Southern hospital. What a bless- 
ing he might have been to his mother, if she had only helped 
us to bring him to Christ. 

In the Indiana Penitentiary I was told of a man who was im- 
prisoned there under an assumed name. His mother heard 
where he was. She was too poor to ride, so she walked the 
whole distance. She did not at first recognize her son in his 
prison suit and short hair, but when she did she threw her arms 
around him and said : " I am to blame for this ; if I had only 
taught you to obey God and keep the Sabbath you would not 
be here." How many mothers, if they were honest, could trace 
the ruin of their children to early training. 

Once while I was attending a meeting in a certain city, a 
lady came to me and said : " I want you to go home with me ; 
I have something to say to you." When we reached her home, 
some friends were there. After they had retired, tears came 
into her eyes, but with an effort she repressed her emotion, and 
said that she was going to tell me some things she had never 
told to any one. I would not relate this incident now, but she 
has gone to another world. She said she had a son in Chicago, 
and she was very anxious about him. When he was young he 
became interested in religion at the rooms of the Young Men's 
Christian Association. He used to go out in the streets and 
circulate tracts. He was her only son, and she was very 
ambitious that he should make a name in the world, and get 
into the " highest circles." Oh, what a mistake people make 
about these highest circles ! She was deceived, like a good 
many more votaries of fashion and hunters after wealth, at 
the present time. She thought it was beneath her son to 



600 HEART-BROKEN PARENTS. 

associate with young men who hadn't much money. She tried 
to get him away from them, but they had more influence 
than" she, and, finally, to break up his associations with 
these worthy young men, she packed him off to a boarding- 
school. He soon entered college, and the next thing she heard 
was that he had gone astray. She often wrote letters urging 
him to come to the kingdom of God, but she heard that he 
tore them up without reading them. She went to him and 
tried to regain the influence she once possessed over him, but 
her efforts were useless, and she returned home with a broken 
heart. He left college, and for two years nothing was heard 
of him. 

At last they learned that he was in Chicago, and his father 
found him and gave him thirty thousand dollars to start in 
business. They thought this would change him, but it didn't. 
They asked me to use my influence with him. I asked a friend 
to invite him to his house one night, where I intended to meet 
him ; he heard I was to be there and he did not come. I tried 
many times to reach him, but failed. Some time after, while 
traveling in New England, I saw a dispatch in a New York 
paper, stating that he had been drowned in Lake Michigan. 
His father went on to find the body, and he took it home to 
a broken-hearted mother. She said, " If I thought he were in 
Heaven I should have peace." Her disobedience of God's law 
came back upon her. So, parents, if you have a son impressed 
with the gospel, help him to come to Christ. 

We should take our children to church with us. Even if 
the sermon does not touch them they are getting into good 
habits. If the minister says a weak thing don't speak of it 
before the children, because you are bringing your minister 
into disrespect with them. Encourage them to bring the text 
home ; let the Word be spoken to them at all times, in season 
and out of season. If Bible truths sink down into their hearts 
the fruit will be precious, and they will become useful in the 
church and in the world. Let them hear the word of God, 
and if they do not understand it explain it to them. You know 



DREADING SUNDAY. 6 0I 

the meat they require is the same that we feed on ; but if the 
pieces are too large we must cut them up for them — cut them 
finer. If the sermon is a hard one, cut it into thin slices so that 
they can take it. 

Years ago, when my eldest son was a little boy, he did not 
like to go to church, and he would get up in the morning and 
say to his mother, "What day is to-morrow?" "Tuesday." 
" Next day ? " " Wednesday." " Next day ? " " Thursday ; " 
and so on, till he came to the answer, " Sunday." " Dear me," 
he would moan. I said to his mother, " We cannot have our 
boy grow up to hate Sunday in that way; that will never do." 
That is the way I used to feel when I was a boy. I used to look 
upon Sunday with a kind of dread. Very few kind words were 
associated with that day. I don't know that the minister ever 
said a kind thing to me, or even once put his hand on my head. 
I don't know that he ever noticed me, unless it was when I was 
asleep in the gallery, and he woke me up. That kind of thing 
won't do ; we must make Sunday the most attractive day of 
the week ; not a day to be dreaded, but a day of happiness. 
Well, the mother took the work up with this boy. She read 
Bible stories, and put those blessed truths in a way that he 
could comprehend, and soon the feeling of dread for Sunday 
passed away. "What day's to-morrow?" he would ask. 
" Sunday." " I am glad." 

If we make Bible truths interesting — break them up in 
some shape so that children can get at them, they will begin to 
enjoy them. There's no influence like a mother's, and if the 
mothers will give a little time to the children in this way, and 
read Bible stories to them, or tell them in a simple way, it will 
not be long before the child knows the Bible from beginning 
to end. 

Children are not born good. Men may talk of natural 
goodness, but I don't find it. Goodness must come down from 
the Father of Light. To have a good nature a man must be 
born of God. There is another reason — a father may be a 
very good man, but the mother may be pulling in another 



602 AMBITIOUS PARENTS. 

direction. She may want her children to occupy a high 
worldly position. She may have great ambition in that di- 
rection, and train her child for the world. Again, it may be 
the reverse — a holy, pious mother and a worldly father. It 
is pretty hard for the children when the father and mother do 
not pull together. 

Another reason is, a great many people have very little 
sense about bringing up children. I've known mothers to 
punish their children by making them read the Bible. Do not 
be guilty of such a thing. If you want children to love the 
Bible do not punish them by making them read it. It is the 
most attractive book in the world. But that is the way to spoil 
its attractiveness, and make them hate it with perfect hatred. 

There is another reason. A great many people are en- 
gaged in looking after other people's children to the neglect 
of their own. No father or mother has a right to do this, what- 
ever position they hold in the world. The father may be a 
great statesman or a great business man, but he is responsible 
for his children. 

Some time ago I read of a vessel that had been off on a 
whaling voyage about three years. The father of one of the 
sailors had charge of the lighthouse, and he was expecting 
his boy to come home, for it was time for the vessel to return. 
One night a terrible gale arose, and the father fell asleep ; and 
while he slept his light went out. When morning came he 
realized what he had done, and he was afraid that some vessel 
might have been wrecked, and that lives might have been lost. 
His fears were well founded, for there had been a terrible 
wreck. He walked along the beach, hoping to save some one 
who might still be alive. The first body that came floating 
toward the shore was the body of his own son ! He had been 
watching for that boy for many days, and he had been gone 
for three years. He had perished in sight of home because his 
father had let his light go out! What a warning to fathers 
and mothers to-day ! 

I have no sympathy with the idea that our children must 



THE LITTLE ONES MAY COME. 605 

grow up before they are converted. Once I saw a lady with 
three young daughters at her side, and I asked the mother if 
she was a Christian. " Yes, sir." Then I asked the oldest 
daughter if she was a Christian. Her chin quivered and the 
tears came into her eyes, and she said, " I wish I was." And 
the mother looked angrily at me and said, " I don't want you 
to speak to my children on that subject. They don't under- 
stand." And in great rage she took them all away from me. 
One daughter was fourteen years old, one twelve, and the other 
ten, but they weren't old enough to be talked to about religion ! 
Let them drift into the world and plunge into worldly amuse- 
ments, and then see how hard it is to reach them. 

Many a mother is mourning to-day because her boy has 
gone beyond her reach and will not allow her to pray with him. 
She may pray for him, but he will not let her pray with him. 
When his mind was young and tender she might have led him 
to Christ. Bring them in. " Suffer little children to come 
unto Me." Are you a prayerless father? May God let the 
arrow go down into your soul ! Make up your mind that, God 
helping you, you are going to get the children in. 

A mother once came to me and said, " Mr. Moody, I want 
you to pray for me." " Well," I asked, " why do you want to 
be prayed for?" She said, "I have three sons, and they 
have all gone astray, and I am the most wretched woman 
living. I feel that I am to blame. I feel that I haven't been 
true to the charge God gave me, and the thought is killing me. 
I want you to pray for me, and if God will forgive me, and if I 
get right in His sight, with His grace and by my prayers and 
faith they may yet be brought back." Are there not hundreds 
in the same condition as this poor woman ? You are ambitious 
for your children ; you desire great things for them ; but be 
careful that you do not lead them into Sodom, where ruin will 
come upon them, and darkness and misery cover them. 

Let me say a word to you, mothers. We depend a good 
deal upon you. I remember in Philadelphia we wanted to 
obtain certain results, and we called a meeting of mothers. 



606 POWER OF A MOTHER'S PRAYERS. 

From five to eight thousand mothers were present, and each 
of them had a particular burden upon her heart. There was 
a mother who had a wayward daughter, another a reckless son, 
another a bad husband. They prayed for aid from the Lord, 
and that grace might be shown to these sons and daughters 
and husbands, and the result was that our inquiry-rooms were 
soon rilled with anxious and earnest inquirers. 

A wayward boy in London, whose mother was very anxious 
for his salvation, said to her, " I am not going to be bothered 
with your prayers any longer ; I will go to America and be rid 
of them." " But, my boy," she said, " God is on the sea, and 
in America, and He hears my prayers for you." Well, he 
came to this country, and when he arrived in New York some 
of the sailors told him that Moody and Sankey were holding 
meetings in the city. The moment he landed he started for 
our place of meeting, and there he found Christ. He became 
a most earnest worker, and he wrote to his mother and told 
her that her prayers had been answered, and that he had found 
his mother's God. 

The impression that a praying mother leaves upon her 
children is life-long. Perhaps when you are dead and gone 
your prayer will be answered. Only the other day I read of 
a mother who had died and left her child alone and very poor. 
She used to pray earnestly for her boy, and she left an im- 
pression upon him that she cared more for his soul than for 
anything else in the world. He grew up to be a successful 
man in business, and became very well off. Twenty years after 
his mother died he thought he would remove her remains into 
his own lot in the cemetery, and erect a monument to her 
memory. As he removed the remains and was about to lay 
them away in their final resting-place, the thought came to 
him that while she was alive she had often prayed for him ; and 
he wondered why her prayers were not answered. That very 
night he was saved. The act of removing his mother's body to 
another resting-place revived all the recollections of his child- 
hood, and he became a Christian. 



SEARCHING FOR HIS SON. 607 

If you have a boy who is a drunkard, ask yourself, " Have I 
done all that I can for him ; have I set before him the truth of 
Christ ? " Not long ago a young man got in the habit of 
going home very late, and his father began to mistrust that he 
had gone astray. One night he told his wife to go to bed, and 
he would sit up till his son came home. The boy came home 
drunk, and the father in his anger pushed him into the street 
and told him never to enter his house again. The father went 
into the house, shut the door, sat down, and began to think : 
" Well, I may be to blame for that boy's conduct, after all. I 
have never prayed with him ; I have never warned him of the 
dangers of the world." He put on his overcoat and hat, and 
started out to find him. The first policeman he met he asked : 

" Have you seen my son? " 

" No." On he went till he met another. 

" Have you seen anything of my son? " 

" No." 

He searched all that night, but not until the morning did he 
find him. He took him by the arm and gently led him home. 
When the son was sober the father said : 

" My dear boy, I want you to forgive me ; I've never prayed 
for you ; I've never lifted my heart to God for you ; I've been the 
means of leading you astray, and I want your forgiveness." 

The son was touched, and what was the result? Within 
twenty-four hours he became a convert, and gave up the cup. 

While attending a convention in Illinois a man past 
seventy years old arose. He said he remembered only one 
thing about his father, but that one thing had followed him all 
through life. He could not remember his death, he had no 
recollection of his funeral, but he remembered how one winter 
night his father took a chip and with his pocket-knife whittled 
out a cross, and with tears in his eyes held it up and told how 
God in His infinite love had sent His Son down here to redeem 
us, and how He had died on the cross for us. That story of the 
cross had followed him through life. I tell you if you teach 
children truths they will cling to them all through life. 



608 A CHILD'S VERSION. 

A little child of eight was going to recite at a Sunday-school 
concert. When the time came the little girl trembled so she 
could hardly speak. She began, "Jesus said/" and com- 
pletely broke down. Again she tried, "Jesus said, suffer," 
but she stopped again. A third attempt was made, and she 
said, " Suffer little children — to come to Me, — and don't 
anybody stop them, for He wants them all to come." And that 
is the truth. 

When we were preaching in Dundee, Scotland, a mother 
came to me with her two sons, sixteen and seventeen years old. 
She said, " Will you talk to my boys ? " Next night she asked 
me again, and the following night she repeated her request. 
Five hundred miles she had journeyed to get God's blessing 
for her boys. She followed us to London, and the first night 
I was there, I saw her in our meeting. She was accompanied 
by only one of her boys — the other had died. Towards the 
close of the meetings I received this letter from her : 

" Dear Mr. Moody: For months I have never considered the day's 
work ended unless you and your work had been specially prayed for. 
Now it appears before us more and more. What in our little measure 
we have found has no doubt been the happy experience of many others 
in London. My husband and I have sought as our greatest privilege 
to take unconverted friends one by one to Agricultural Hall, and I 
thank God that, with a single exception, those brought under the 
preaching from your lips have accepted Christ as their Saviour, and are 
rejoicing in His love." 

She was a lady of wealth and position. She lived a little 
way out of London ; gave up her beautiful home and took 
lodgings near Agricultural Hall, so as to be useful in the 
inquiry-room. When we went down to the Opera House she 
was there ; when we went down to the East End there she was 
again ; and when I left London she had the names of one 
hundred and fifty who had accepted Christ from her. 

A minister of my acquaintance received a letter from Scot- 
land and he forwarded it to me. It was the earnest plea of a 
loving father. Lie asked us to look out for his son, whose 
name was Willie. That name touched my heart, because it was 



CHRIST WILL BEAR THE BURDEN. 



609 



the name of my own son. I asked people to help us to get on 
the track of that boy, but all our efforts were fruitless. But 
in far-off Scotland that Christian father was holding his boy 
uo to God in prayer, and one night among those who stood up 
and asked for prayer was Willie. He told me a story that 
thrilled my heart, and testified that the prayers of his father and 
mother in their far-off home had been instrumental in effecting 
his salvation. Do you not think that the hearts of those 
parents rejoiced ? He said he was rushing to destruction, but 
there was a power in those prayers that saved him. 

A mother once came to me and said : 

" It is easy enough for you to speak in that way ; but if you 
had the burden I've got, you couldn't cast it on the Lord." 

" Why, is your burden so great that Christ can't carry it? " 

" No, it isn't too great for Him to carry; but I can't put it 
on Him." 

" That is your fault," I replied. 

I find a great many people with burdens who, rather than 
just come to Him with them, strap them tighter on their backs 
and go away staggering under the load. I asked her the 
nature of her trouble, and she said : 

" I have an only son who is a wanderer. I don't know 
where he is. If I only knew where he was I would go round 
the world to find him. You don't know how I love him. This 
sorrow is killing me." 

" Why don't you take him to Christ? You can reach him 
at the throne, even though he be at the uttermost part of the 
world. Go tell God all about your trouble, and He will take it 
away; and not only that, but if you never see him on earth, 
God can give you faith that you will see your bey in Heaven." 

If you have a burden like this, fathers, mothers, bring 
it to Him and cast it on Him, and He, the great physician, will 
heal your broken hearts. 



37 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

HOW TO CONDUCT MEETINGS — TO YOUNG CONVERTS. 

Preaching Everybody Out of Doors — Killing a Meeting — "A Pity 
to Stop While There's Anybody Listening " — Some Astonished 
Elders — Asking for an Explanation — Curiosity Aroused — Long- 
winded Ministers — Deacons Who Talk Too Long — What an 
Old Deacon Said — Six Years Without a Welcome — " Disturbing 
the Impression " — Mr. Moody's Rejoinder — Harrowing it In — 
What to do With People Who Sleep in Church — How Mr. 
Moody Slept in Dr. Kirk's Church — The Result — A Hot-Water 
Advocate — A Convert's Experience Under a Railroad Bridge — 
" Wait Till I Get My Big Brother " — Story of An Old Colored 
Woman — Jumping Through a Stone Wall — " Before and After " 

— Mr. Moody Invited to Attend the Opening of a Billiard Saloon 

— The Uplifted Knife — The Blind Man with a Lantern — 
Reminiscences of Mr. Moody's Early Career. 

REVIVALS HOW TO CONDUCT MEETINGS. 

IN many towns where we held union meetings we changed 
ministers every night, and a good many special religious 
meetings were organized, and proved perfect failures. I 
received a great many letters telling about special meetings, 
how the people turned out well, but there were no results. 
On inquiry I found they had a Methodist minister one night, 
a Baptist minister another, an Episcopalian minister another, 
and a Congregational minister another, in order to keep all 
denominations in, and the result was they preached everybody 
out of doors. You could see right on the face of it that that 
would be the result. One minister got the people interested, 
and just at the point where he needed to continue his ministra- 
tions another stepped in and he went out. And so there was 
no getting hold of the people. 

These special meetings ought to be short. A great many 
meetings are killed because they are too long. The minister's 
five minutes are always ten, and his ten minutes are always 

(610) 



A LONG SERVXE. gj I 

twenty, and the result is they sometimes preach everybody into 
the spirit and out of it before the meeting is over. When 
people leave they are glad to go home, and they ought to go 
home. Send them away hungry and they will come back 
again. There was a man in London who preached in the open 
air until everybody left him, and somebody said to him after- 
wards : 

" Why did you preach so long? " 

" Oh," said he, " I thought it would be a pity to stop while 
there was anybody listening." 

It is a good deal better to cut the service right off short, 
than to have it too long, then people will come again to hear. 

Then it is a good thing to have a subject. What we want is 
variety. Instead of having Deacon Jones and Deacon Smith 
and Deacon Brown do all the praying and all the talking, have 
somebody else say something, and thus create and maintain 
interest. 

A young minister was called to a church where the people 
seemed to have fallen asleep. He tried to rouse them, but it 
was of no use. He preached and preached, and tried to get 
them interested, and to attend the prayer-meetings, but he 
could not. One Sunday he announced : " This week we'll 
have no prayer-meeting." They wondered what it meant; the 
idea that this young minister should do away with prayer- 
meetings that had been carried on there for fifty years ! They 
were astonished. " But," said he, " we will have a praise- 
meeting." At the close of the meeting one elder said to an- 
other : 

" What's he going to give up the prayer-meeting for? Has 
he consulted you about it ? " 

" No." 

" Well," replied the former, " that's a very serious matter ; 
what is a praise-meeting? " 

They had never had a praise-meeting, and they didn't know 
what a praise-meeting was. They asked the minister, and he 
told them to wait until Friday night and they would see. 



6i2 THE PRAISE-MEETING. 

The people began to talk about it, and a great many came 
out of curiosity to see what a praise-meeting was. The young 
minister began by reading some of those good old psalms. 
" Now," said he, " if you can think of anything in your past 
life that you have received from God, praise Him for it ; if you 
can think of any benefits you have received, praise God for 
them." They began to think, and they found they had a good 
many things to praise God for. One man arose and praised 
God for a praying mother who had led him to Christ. An- 
other man arose and praised God for the Bible. Others praised 
God for this thing and that, and the result was that when the 
meeting was over, instead of getting up and walking silently 
out, they remained and shook hands with one another, and 
said, " I believe we are going to have a revival." My friends, 
if we don't thank God for what He has done for us, and are 
not full of joy and gladness, the world will not come to Christ. 

I would not have the minister always take the lead, for I 
have noticed that when the minister always leads there is a col- 
lapse when he is absent. It seems to me a minister should call 
on different members to preside, and Avhen he is absent the 
meetings won't miss him, and there will be no falling off. Not 
only that, but he is training his members to work. How many 
lawyers, physicians, and public speakers we have who do noth- 
ing to help along the work. I believe that difficulty could be 
removed if the minister would take a little pains. Have once 
in a while a thanksgiving meeting. It wakes up a church 
wonderfully to let the young converts relate their experiences. 

You say, what are you going to do with these men who 
talk so long? I would speak to them privately, and tell them 
they must try to make their talks shorter. It is a good thing 
sometimes for ministers themselves not to talk too long. 
Sometimes they read a good deal of Scripture, and talk until 
perhaps only fifteen minutes are left, and then they complain 
because Deacon Smith or Deacon Jones or some one else 
talked too long. Just let the minister strike the keynote of 
the meeting-, and if he can't do that in ten minutes he can't do 



RECOGNIZING CHRISTIANS HERE. 



613 



it at all. Very often a minister takes up a chapter and ex- 
hausts it, and says everything he can think of about it. Can 
you wonder that a layman cannot say more who has given no 
study to the subject? Give out the subject a week ahead, let 
the minister take five or ten minutes in opening, and then let 
others take part. That would make greater variety. When 
a man takes part he becomes greatly interested himself. There 
was a great deal of truth in what the old deacon said, that 
when he took part in the meetings they were very interesting, 
and when he didn't they seemed very dull. 

Now, a stranger coming into a church likes to have some 
one speak to him. He does not feel insulted at all. I re- 
member two young men who came into our inquiry-room in 
New York one night, and they were asked : 

"Where do you attend church?" They gave the name 
of the church they had steadily attended, and one of them said : 

" I advise you to go and see the minister of that church." 

"Why?" 

" Because we don't want to go there any more ; we have 
attended there for six years and no one has ever spoken to us." 

A man was preaching about Christians recognizing each 
other in heaven, and some one said, " I wish he would preach 
about recognizing each other on earth." 

In one place where I preached I looked over the great 
audience and saw men earnestly talking to others here and 
there. I said to the Secretary of the Young Men's Christian 
Association, who got up the meeting, " Who are these men? " 
He said, " They are a band of workers." They were scattered 
through the hall, preaching and watching for souls. Out of 
the fifty workers then in the hall forty-one were talking and 
praying with others. 

I do not see how anyone can preach without having inquiry- 
meetings. I like to see the converts. One minister in Scot- 
land told me he did not believe in " disturbing the impression." 
If he made an impression he didn't want any one to say any- 
thing. Said he, " After you sow the seed you don't want to 



614 ASLEEP IN CHURCH. 

dig it up to see whether it has sprouted." " But," I replied, 
" the farmers harrow the seed in after it is sown." 

If a man goes to sleep in church wake him up. It is terribly 
annoying to a preacher to have a man sound asleep right in 
front of him. I remember I used to go up in the gallery when 
I was a boy, and get into a comfortable place and go to sleep. 
When I went to the Mount Vernon Church in Boston I used to 
go to sleep there. One day when I was in the gallery, sound 
asleep, a young student — from Harvard College, I think, and 
I shall always feel very grateful to him — I wish I knew his 
name — gave me a punch with his elbow and I rubbed my 
eyes and woke up. I looked at the minister, and lo and be- 
hold, I thought he was preaching directly at me. I said to my- 
self, "Who has been telling Dr. Kirk about me?" I woke 
up just at the right time. It was just the place in the sermon 
that hit my case. The perspiration stood out all over me. 
I never felt so cheap in my life. It did me a great deal of good 
to wake me up. So when you see a man asleep near you, wake 
him up. 

When we were in Glasgow there were about one thousand 
men converted who had been slaves of strong drink, and the 
question was, how to hold them together. They organized, and 
called themselves the Mizpah Band, and met every Saturday. 
That is the day of peculiar temptation in the old country, for 
men are generally paid of! on Saturday, and the week's wages 
often go for whiskey. These men knew they would be strongly 
tried and tempted on Saturday ; so they agreed to meet every 
Saturday afternoon. Then the question came up, " What will 
bind us together? " They decided to start a male choir. They 
began with a choir of four hundred ; and out of these there 
were not more than a dozen who could sing. If you could have 
heard them you wouldn't have thought it was singing. The 
noise sounded as though it came from cracked kettles and tin 
pans. Their voices hadn't been worn down. But these choir 
meetings kept them off the street corners and out of the 
whiskey shops. They went on practicing and improving, and 



THE POWER OF SONG. 



615 



six months later, when Mr. Sankey and I returned to Glasgow, 
I never heard such inspiring singing. They kept on growing 
in numbers until there were over eleven hundred of them. 
They went out every week to the different parts of Glasgow, 
some to preach the best they knew how, others to tell what 
God had done for them, and others to sing; and thus in one 
way or another, they declared the Gospel. 

I mention this to bring out this fact : that a great deal of 
talent in all our churches lies buried. Utilize it. I think a 
male choir is a good thing. Let the boys get together and 
practice, and then use them in the churches. I think there is 
no singing that will take hold of us more than hymns sung 
by a male choir. Don't sing in an unknown tongue. In a 
great many churches you don't know for the life of you what 
the choir is singing about. I have been in churches where, 
if you tried to follow the choir in your hymn-book, you 
couldn't find the place. They might as well have sung in 
Greek or Latin. The music drowned the words. What we 
want is singing that will bring out the Gospel in such a way 
that the people won't forget it. Get the young people to sing, 
and in that way you will create fresh interest. I believe it is 
easier for a man to preach after good live singing. I have been 
in churches where the choir would sing something in an un- 
known tongue, and then I would be too upset to preach. I 
would have the programme all laid out before me, but after 
such singing I would say to myself, " I am not fit to preach." 
The choir put me all out of sorts. Then I would give out 
" Rock of Ages," or some hymn that everybody could sing; 
but the choir would find music to smother the words. What 
we want is a revolution in church singing. Get words and 
music that the people can understand. Have solos, duets, 
quartettes, a male choir, every kind of a choir you can get to- 
gether. It is always a sign of backsliding when people don't 
sing. You never have a revival without singing. The 
nearer a man gets to God the more he wants to sing. I can't 
sing very well with my voice, but I can sing in my heart. 



6l6 SUIT THE METHOD TO THE NEED. 

To be successful in winning souls to Christ you must find 
out people's differences. They are not the same in their 
spiritual wants any more than in their temporal wants. What 
is good for one is rank poison for another. You can't treat 
all alike. I have a friend who, when he is sick, always drinks 
a lot of hot water and goes to bed. It don't make any differ- 
ence what's the matter with him, he has only one single remedy. 
So a man may have just one verse of Scripture. He's always 
quoting it. It fits his case, and he thinks it does everybody 
else's. A man I knew up in Wisconsin was converted under 
a railway bridge, and to this day he keeps urging people to go 
right down under that bridge if they want to get converted sure. 

No two thoughts are just alike, no two needs are just alike, 
no two sinners are going to come to Christ in precisely the 
same way. Instead of looking for others' experiences, look 
for one for yourself. 

TO YOUNG CONVERTS. 

There are a great many lukewarm Christians who really 
believe in their hearts that young converts won't stand long. 
Some people will give them six weeks, and some six months, 
and then all will be over. That has been the cry ever since I 
can remember. I suppose we shall hear it to the end of time. 
Well, there are some who do not hold out, but think of the 
thousands and thousands that do. " God is able to make him 
stand ; " and if young converts, in the morning of their Chris- 
tian experience, learn this one lesson, it will save them from 
many a painful hour. 

It is said that " short accounts make long friends." Keep 
short accounts with God. You should see the face of God 
every morning before you see the face of any human being. If 
you come to the cross every morning, you will never get but 
one day's journey from the cross. Just keep close to the cross 
and close to Him, and if anything has gone wrong during the 
day or evening, do not sleep until that account has been settled. 
Take your trouble to Christ and tell it right out to Him ; tell 



KEEPING SHORT ACCOUNTS. 



617 



Him you are sorry, and ask Him to forgive you. He delights 
to forgive. That is what I mean by keeping a short account 
with God. You know when you continue to buy a little sugar 
at a grocery store every few days, in a short time the grocer has 
a bill against you for ten or twenty pounds. You are sur- 
prised, and perhaps say you never had so much sugar. Then 
you quarrel with the grocer, and you have a great deal of 
trouble over it. Perhaps if you kept short accounts you would 
remember what you owed. Keep short accounts or else you 
won't prosper. 

A little boy was going home from school one day and met 
a big fellow who wanted to fight with him. He said, " Well, 
wait till I go and get my big brother," and he ran off after his 
big brother and away ran the other boy. Tell Satan when he 
threatens to convince you that you will go to Christ and let 
Him settle it for you. You are no match for Satan. He is 
stronger than you are ; but Satan flies when you bring Christ. 
He is your only refuge. 

A man with whom I was acquainted bought out a certain 
store. Everybody predicted that he would fail. Two or three 
men had failed in that store, with more capital than he had. 
Well, he went on and on, and did not fail, and every one 
wondered how he got along so well. By and by it leaked out 
that he had a rich brother who kept furnishing money, and 
he kept close to him. So if you will only keep close to Christ, 
He has all the treasures of Heaven to place at your disposal ; 
He will keep you. There is no danger of your going back to 
the world if you keep close to Him. 

There are some things I used to like to do before I was 
converted that I don't do now ; but, thank God, I don't want 
to do them. God has turned my appetite against such things. 
I have been fed upon this blessed Bible until I have no longer 
any taste for a good deal of the literature I used to like. 

Don't go to church just to criticize. Any one can do that. 
If you feel inclined to criticize, just stop and ask yourself 
whether you could conduct the services any better. Some men 



6i8 PRINCIPLES, NOT RULES. 

make only one mistake, that of finding imperfections in every- 
body and everything. If the minister does not preach the 
Gospel, attend some church where the Gospel is preached. 
Attend that one church and stand by your minister. 

Sometimes when duty seems to require us to do some very 
difficult thing, people say, " But how are you going to do it? " 
I don't know how, but that is none of my business. An old 
colored woman was about right when she said that if God 
should tell her to jump through a stone wall, she would jump 
right at it — that getting through would be God's work and 
not hers ; He would see to it if she did what she was told. 

There is an institution in London where they take care of 
poor little street Arabs. The first thing they do when one is 
brought in is to have his picture taken in his rags and dirt, just 
as he looks when they find him. Then, after he has grown up 
there, and has had all the benefits of the institution, before he 
leaves they have his photograph taken again, and when he de- 
parts they give him the two protographs that he may compare 
them. It would be a good thing if we could distinctly remem- 
ber ourselves as we were when the Lord first found us, and 
compare that picture with ourselves when He leaves us on the 
hilltops of glory. 

Some young people ask me questions about their daily 
walk and conduct. They say, " Is it right for me to go to the 
theater?" "Is it right for me to smoke?" or, "to drink 
moderately?" I cannot carry your consciences; Christ does 
not lay down rules ; He lays down principles. One rule I 
have followed is this : If there is anything I am troubled about 
in my conscience, and am uncertain whether it is right or not, 
I give Christ the benefit of the doubt. 

For myself, I could not go to a theater ; I would not like to 
have my children go. I do not do anything myself that I 
would not like to have them do. I could not smoke, because 
I do not want my boys to smoke. I could not read flashy 
novels, because I have no desire to read them ; but if I did I 
would not do it. 



PRAYING IN A BILLIARD ROOM. 



619 



Another rule is : Don't do anything you cannot pray over, 
and never go where you cannot pray if you want to. In one of 
our meetings in Chicago a man arose to speak. I didn't know 
him at first. He had been a rumseller, but after his business 
had been broken up he went to the Rocky Mountains, and he 
had recently returned. This is how it happened. He once 
opened a saloon and a grand billiard hall in Chicago. It was 
one of the most magnificent billiard halls on the West Side, 
elegantly gilded and frescoed. He sent me an invitation to be 
present at the opening, which I accepted. I went around to 
the place before it was opened and saw the partners and asked 
them if they would allow me to bring a friend. They asked 
me who he was. 

" Well," I said, " it isn't necessary to tell who he is, but I 
never go without him." They began to mistrust me. 

" Who is he? " they again inquired. 

" Well, I'll come with him and if I see anything wrong I'll 
ask him to forgive you." 

" Come," said they, " we don't want any praying." 

" Well," I said, " you've given me an invitation; and I'm 
coming." 

" But if you come you needn't pray," they replied. 

"Well," said I, "I'll tell you what we'll do, we'll com- 
promise the matter ; and if you don't want me to come and pray 
for you, then let me pray for both of you now," to which they 
agreed. 

It turned out that one of them had a praying mother, and 
the prayer touched his heart ; the other had a mother in heaven. 
I asked God to bless their souls, and break their business to 
pieces. In a few months their business did go all to pieces. 

Well, the man who arose in the prayer-meeting told a story 
that touched my soul, He said his business hadn't prospered 
— he failed and went to the Rocky Mountains. Life became a 
burden to him and he made up his mind that he would put an 
end to his life. He took a knife which he purposed to drive 
into his heart, and sought a lonely place in the mountains to 



620 LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE. 

kill himself. He raised the knife to plunge into his heart, 
when he heard a voice — it was the voice of his mother. He 
remembered her dying words when he was a boy. He heard 
her say, " Johnny, if ever you get into trouble, pray to God." 
The knife dropped from his hand, and he asked God to be 
merciful to him. His prayer was answered, and he came back 
to Chicago and lifted up his voice for Him. Just the moment 
he cried for mercy he got it. 

If you cannot do a thing honestly, give it up, let the conse- 
quences be what they may. If you take my advice you will 
never touch strong drink as long as you live. Many young 
converts who have fallen owe their relapse to that cursed cup. 
You say, " Some church members, some Christians who stand 
high, drink moderately." Well, don't you touch it if they do. 
Some men have strong wills and can tell when to stop ; but 
ninety-nine out of a hundred have not strong wills, and your 
son may be the very next one to go too far. If it is not an in- 
jury to yourselves, give it up for Christ's sake and for the sake 
of others. 

A friend of mine was walking along the streets one dark 
night and he saw a blind man coming along with a lantern. 
He said to him, " My friend, are you not blind?" :c Yes," 
was the answer. " Then what do you carry that lantern for? " 
Said he, " I carry the lantern that people may not stumble over 
me." Let us hold up our light, burning with the clear radiance 
of Heaven, that others may not stumble over us. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

QUALIFICATIONS FOR CHRISTIAN WORK — FAITH, 
COURAGE, ENTHUSIASM, AND PERSEVERANCE — 
NINE NEW THINGS FOR THE CHRISTIAN. 

A Scotchman's Observation — " We Die, but Never Surrender " — 
Weighing Men — " Man Overboard ! " — The Light at the Port 
Hole — Saved by a Seasick Man — The Woman Who Went to 
War with a Poker — Wandering in the Blizzard — The Tiny Light 
in the Window — The Man by the Lamp-post — An Impudent 
Fellow — "Moody, You Are Too Zealous" — An Unexpected 
Call at Daybreak — An Incident in Mr. Moody's Early Life — 
"Go Pick Cotton" — Why One Stone was Missing — Stephen 
Girard and the Irishman — An Affecting Scene — "I was 
There ! " — A Fatal Mistake — Hanging On to the " Old 
Man " — Dressing Up " Outside " and " Inside " — Story of the 
Farmer and His Pump — • " I'll Soon Make that Right " — Patch- 
ing Up " Old Adam " — The Old Judge and His Negro, Sambo — 
Singing to a Dying Woman — " Good Night." 

IF YOU will read the lives of those who have been eminent 
in God's service, you will find they have always been men 
of FAITH. I like to meet a man who believes, and 
knows what he believes. To have faith that God can do a 
thing is one thing, but to have faith that God will use us is 
quite another. I heard a Scotchman remark many years ago 
— and it burned down into my soul — that there was not a 
man who, when in Saul's armor, but knew that God could use 
him, but the one man who believed that God would use him 
went out and slew the giant. There is a difference. David 
had faith to believe that God would use him. It is this miser- 
able unbelief that is keeping back the blessing. 

When God told Moses to send out the twelve spies into the 
land of Canaan, it was on account of their unbelief. God had 
told them He would take them into the Promised Land, and 
that was enough. They didn't need to send out spies to see 

if the Almighty had told the truth. I believe the twelve men 

(621) 



622 THE NEED OF ENTHUSIASM. 

were representative men, and the best the tribes had. They 
brought back a minority and a majority report. They all ad- 
mitted that what God said was true; but ten of them added to 
their report, " There we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, 
which come of the giants; and we were in our own sight as 
grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight." Send out twelve 
men now, and they would'bring back just such a report. Send 
out twelve officers of the church, and ten of them would throw 
cold water on any movement that suggested going forward. 

Saloons and haunts of vice would be as nothing if the 
Church of God would rise in its strength. We could with 
faith sweep these abominations out of the way. It is faith 
that the world can sec that's needed. Some think that you 
can't see faith. You can't. God can. 

Then, another thing needed is COURAGE. What we 
want is the courage of our convictions. I believe that the rea- 
son why so many men in the Lord's work fail is because they 
are afraid of public opinion. Know that you are right, then 
go ahead. A man told me some time ago that he once started 
a good work, and because a newspaper published an article 
against it he got discouraged and gave it up. The idea of a 
newspaper stopping him. They used to take martyrs to the 
stake and burn them up in vain efforts to make them yield. 
If you see a sin, smite it. What we want is courage to speak 
out our convictions. If a thing is right, stand by it. If it is 
wrong, fight it. 

Another thing that men are greatly afraid of is ENTHU- 
SIASM. Do you know what that word means? I will tell 
you: "IN GOD/' That is what it means. Would to God 
we had a thousand times more enthusiasm than we have. I 
am not afraid of holy enthusiasm; it is a good thing to have. 
During our Civil War there were certain men whose names 
were worth more than an army of ten thousand men. Why? 
Because they inspired enthusiasm that carried everything be- 
fore it. When Phil Sheridan was promoted — I was in the 
army at the time — and the men learned that he was to com- 



DEVOTION TO OUR LEADER. 623 

mand them, cheer upon cheer rang up and down the lines. 
They were encouraged to fight, and they felt that the battle 
might now go on and that they would gain the victory. 

A man once accused an enthusiast for Christ of being mad. 
" Well," said the enthusiast, " I have got a good asylum to go 
to and a good keeper on the way! " God cannot use you until 
you are willing to have the world point the finger of scorn at 
you. If the world hasn't got anything to say against us it is 
pretty sure that Christ won't have much to say for us. Some- 
body once spoke to a young convert who was trying to preach 
in the street, and said, " You ought to be ashamed of yourself." 
" Well," he said, " I am, but I am not ashamed of my Saviour." 

There is a story told of a man back in the ninth century, 
I think, who undertook with a little handful of men to attack 
a king with an army of 30,000; and when the king heard that 
he had only five hundred men, he sent a message to the young 
general — perhaps he thought he was an enthusiast and was 
mad — that if he would surrender he would be very merciful to 
him and spare his life. The young general heard the messen- 
ger, and when he got through he said to one of his soldiers, " Go 
leap into yonder chasm," and over he went into the jaws of 
death. Then he called another, and, handing him a dagger, 
said, " Take that and drive into your heart." And the soldier 
drove it into his heart, staggered forward, and fell dead. Then 
he turned to the messenger and said, " Go back and tell your 
king that I have five hundred such men ; tell him we die, but 
never surrender." When the king heard that five hundred 
such men were before him, his army became demoralized and 
fled. That story is recorded in history. Whether it is true or 
not, T don't know. But " one shall chase a thousand, and two 
put ten thousand to flight." I have seen it verified. A man 
full of fire and enthusiasm is worth a thousand others at any 
time. The trouble is, a great many are looking at the ob- 
stacles and the army that is against us. Some men are to be 
counted just as you would count penny pies, or tin soldiers; 
other men you've got to weigh. 



624 CHEER ON THE WORKERS. 

I think I hear some of you with silver locks saying, " I wish 
I were young, how I would rush into the battle." Well, if you 
cannot be a fighter, you can pray and encourage the others. 
There are two kinds of old people in the world. One kind has 
become chilled and sour, they have no warmth of feeling; but 
the others light up every meeting with their genial presence, 
and cheer on the workers. Draw near, old age, and cheer on 
the workers, and take them by the hand and encourage them. 
There was a building on fire. The flames leaped around the 
staircase, and from a three-story window a little boy was seen, 
crying piteously for help. The only way to reach him was 
by a ladder. One was obtained and a fireman ascended, but 
when he had almost reached the boy, the flames broke from 
the window and leaped around him. He faltered and seemed 
afraid to go further. Suddenly some one in the crowd shouted 
" Give him a cheer," and cheer after cheer went up. The fire- 
man was nerved with new energy, and rescued the child. Just 
so with our young men. Whenever you see them wavering, 
cheer them on. If you cannot work yourself, give them cheers 
to nerve them on in their glorious work. 

Some years ago I heard of a man who accomplished some- 
thing when he was seasick ; and that's the time a man doesn't 
usually attempt to do anything for anybody else; he is too 
much occupied with himself. One night while this man was 
very sick, he heard the startling cry on deck, " Man over- 
board! " " Poor fellow," he said, " I wish I was well, and then 
perhaps I could do something to save him." It was dark, and 
all at once the thought occurred to him : " If I hold the light at 
the porthole it may do some good." So he held a light at the 
porthole; and by and by he heard that the man was saved. 
The man who had held the light laid clown again and had an- 
other turn at being seasick. By and by he crawled up on deck 
and got into conversation with a man. After talking with him 
awhile he found, to his surprise, that he was the very man who 
had fallen overboard. The man said he was going down the 
third time and had given up all hope, when someone put a light 



KEEPING AT IT. 



625 



at the porthole and the sailors just saw his hand and seized it. 
That light at the porthole had saved his life. My dear friends, 
you can hold the light for someone else, can't you? You can 
do something if you will. 

The next thing is PERSEVERANCE. Spurgeon used 
to call it " Stick-to-it-ive-ness." That's what we want. If we 
don't succeed to-day, we will go at it all the stronger to- 
morrow; if we don't succeed on Sunday, we'll try again on 
Monday; if we don't get it in February, we will go at it in 
March; and if we fail in March, we will try it in April, and we 
will not let up all summer. There's no calendar in Heaven. 
Don't stop work in summer. Saloons and all the haunts of 
vice are wide open every day and every night in the week, and 
while we are sleeping Satan is doing his work. 

I remember years ago I got discouraged because I could 
not see much fruit from my work. One morning, when I was 
in my study, much depressed, one of my Sunday-school 
teachers came in and wanted to know what I was discouraged 
about, and I told him it was because I could see no results 
from my work. " By the way," he said, " did you, ever study 
the character of Noah?" I thought I knew all about Noah, 
and I told him so; but he said, " Now, if you have never 
studied Noah carefully, you ought to do it, for I cannot tell you 
what a blessing his example has been to me." After he went 
out I took my Bible and commenced to read about Noah, and 
the thought came stealing over me, " Here is a man who toiled 
and worked a hundred years and didn't get discouraged; if he 
did, the Holy Ghost didn't put it on record." The clouds 
lifted, and I got up and said, " If the Lord wants me to work 
without any fruit I will work on." 

That day I went down to the noon prayer-meeting, and 
when I saw the people coming to pray I said to myself, " Noah 
worked a hundred years, and he never saw a prayer-meeting 
outside of his own family." Pretty soon a man got up, right 
across the aisle from where I was sitting, and said he had 
come from a little town where a hundred had united with the 
38 



626 TAKING A DECIDED STAND. 

church the year before. And I thought to myself, " What if 
Noah had heard that! He preached so many, many years and 
didn't get a convert, yet he was not discouraged." Then a 
man got up right behind me, and he trembled as he said, " I 
am lost. I want you to pray for my soul." And I said to 
myself, "What if Noah had heard that! He worked a hun- 
dred and twenty years, and never had a man come to him and 
say that; and yet he didn't get discouraged." I made up my 
mind then, that, God helping me, I would never get discour- 
aged again. I would do the best I could, and leave the results 
with God, and it has been a wonderful help to me. 

Now, if we are going to be successful, we must take our 
stand for God, and let the world know we are on the Lord's 
side. I have great respect for the woman who started out 
during the war with a poker. She heard the enemy was 
coming and she went out to meet them. When some one 
asked her what she could do with a poker, she said she would 
at least let everyone know which side she was on. That is 
what we want; and the time is coming when the line must be 
drawn, and those on Christ's side must take their stand. 

It is a fact that all men like to rule. A business man says, 
" If I can stand at the head, commercially, I shall be satisfied." 
Go to the great universities and you will find men there who 
are striving to stand at the head of their profession. Every 
newspaper wants to outdo the others. Every true soldier 
wants to be at the head of the army. Statesmen have their 
eyes fixed on the White House. A mother sends her boy to 
school, and if he receives high honors she manages to let 
everybody know it. It is natural to want to be at the head. 

I was in Paris many years ago, when Napoleon III was 
reigning in all his glory. When he went through the streets 
there was great excitement. You could hear the cheers of the 
populace all along the line. I went into the Exposition, and 
when the Prince Imperial entered, men almost went crazy. 
Thev seemed to have lost their heads over that young prince. 
Onlv three or four vears after that a little narrow house two 



THE LITTLE LIGHT IN THE WINDOW. 627 

or three feet wide and seven feet long was all that the great 
Napoleon needed. His name was soon almost forgotten, and 
to this day France has not allowed his dead body to be brought 
back. The body of the Prince Imperial has never been taken 
back. That, my friends, is a sample of the glory of this world. 
It soon fades — soon passes away — and the place that knows 
you now shall soon know you no more. Your names will soon 
be forgotten if you live only for this world. 

A man in Minnesota, some years ago, was caught in a 
blizzard, — and a blizzard out there is a blizzard indeed. On 
those great rolling prairies the wind seems to come right from 
the North Pole with nothing to stop it. After wandering in 
the blinding storm he got lost, and was ready to lie down and 
die, when he saw a tiny light in a log cabin. The people living 
there thought there might possibly be some one in danger of 
perishing in the storm, and so had put a light in the window. 
He made his way toward it, and his life was saved. He after- 
wards became a wealthy man and bought the farm where that 
log cabin stood, and put up a lighthouse on top of the house, 
hoping to save others. I like that, don't you? 

I used to have a rule, and it was a wonderful help to me, 
never to let a day pass without speaking to somebody about 
his eternal welfare ; and if I did no good to anybody else, it 
was good exercise for me, and helped to keep my heart warm. 
When I was living in Chicago a good many years ago, I re- 
called the fact, one night at ten o'clock, that I had not that 
day personally said a word to direct anybody to the kingdom 
of God. I went out and saw a man standing by a lamp-post. 
Stepping up to him and laying my hand on his shoulder, I said: 

" Are you a Christian? " 

He flew into a rage, clenched his fists, and threatened to 
knock me into the gutter. He said: 

" That's none of your business." 

Well, I didn't know that he knew me, and I went on talk- 
ing to him. He went to a good friend of mine, an elder in the 
church, and said: 



628 ZEAL, OR KNOWLEDGE? 

" Do you know that man Moody is doing more harm in 
Chicago than any ten men are doing good?" 

He said I was an impudent fellow to stop a man on the 
street to ask about his soul. The elder came to me and said: 

" Moody, you are too zealous. You do more harm than 
good, you know. There's such a thing as having zeal with 
knowledge." 

" Well," I said, " I'd rather have zeal without knowledge 
than knowledge without zeal." 

The elder labored with me, but, thank God, he never 
stopped me. I had had a taste of the work and liked it. 
There is no joy like the joy of helping others. 

About three months after, — this was before I was mar- 
ried, — I was sleeping in the rooms of the Young Men's 
Christian Association. I was janitor, Superintendent, Presi- 
dent, and Director, and really the only one to do the work. 
One bitterly cold morning in winter, at daybreak, I heard some 
one knocking at the door. I woke up, went to the door, and 
said: 

"Who is there?" 

" A stranger." 

"What do you want?" 

" I want to talk to you about my soul." 

I opened the door, and there, to my astonishment, was the 
man who cursed me for speaking to him as he leaned against 
the lamp-post. He was very pale, and trembled all over. I 
didn't know but he had delirium tremens. He said: 

" Do you remember stopping a man some months ago at 
ten o'clock at night on Lake Street, and he got angry, and 
cursed you? " 

" I do." 

" Well," he said, " I am that man. I am very sorry. I 
have had no peace for three months. Your words have 
haunted and troubled me. I could not sleep last night, and 
I have come to ask you to pray for me. I want to become a 
Christian." 



OBEDIENCE AND FAITHFULNESS. 



629 



That man accepted Christ, and the moment he had done 
so, he asked: 

" Can't I do something for Christ? Won't you give me 
some work to do for Him?" 

I took him over to my Sunday-school. He went hard at 
work with a class of rough boys, and taught them until the 
Civil War broke out, when he enlisted in the army. He was 
one of the first to fall in battle, but not before he had given 
ringing testimony for God. 

Some one has said that if an angel should be sent to earth 
to sweep the streets, or to rule an empire, it would be all the 
same to him. That is just what the Lord wants men to do, — 
obey his commands. If you want eternal salvation you can 
have it to-day. What are the terms? Obedience. Will you 
obey? If He tells you to repent, then repent. Does He say, 
Go preach? Then go and preach. " Whatsoever He saith 
unto you, do it." But be sure He says it. Do not follow your 
own will, your own ideas. A negro saw a sign which read 
" G. P. C." He said that meant " Go Preach Christ," and he 
proposed to leave his work and go to preaching. But another 
negro came up and said, " No, that ain't it. It's ' Go Pick 
Cotton.' " If your work is to preach the Gospel, then preach; 
if it is to pick cotton, then pick cotton. 

I remember hearing of a person who was always trying to 
do some great thing for the Lord, and because he could not 
do a great thing he never did anything. A man dreamed that 
when he died he was taken by angels to a beautiful temple. 
After admiring it for a time, he discovered that one little stone 
was missing. He said to the angel, " Why was the stone left 
out?" The angel replied, "That place was left for you, but 
you wanted to do great things, and so it was left unfilled." He 
awoke, and was startled, and resolved that he would become a 
worker for God; and he always worked faithfully for Him 
after that. 

A good many years ago a railroad superintendent tele- 
graphed to a man who had charge of a drawbridge not to open 



63O A FATAL ERROR. 

it until after an extra train had passed. A friend came and 
persuaded him to open the bridge to let some boats through. 
He thought there would be time to let the boats pass and 
swing the bridge back before the train came. But he had 
hardly opened it before he heard the train approaching, and 
he didn't have time to get the bridge back before the train 
plunged into the river. The man realized what he had done, 
and his brain reeled. They sent him to a madhouse, and for 
years he walked up and down that madhouse saying " If I 
only had; if I only had! " Had what? Obeyed orders; that 
is all; been obedient. People seem to think obedience isn't 
very important; I don't know of anything that is more im- 
portant. Disobedience has destroyed families and wrecked 
nations. 

A story is told of Stephen Girard and an Irishman who 
came to his place of business and wanted work. Mr. Girard 
liked his looks, and said: 

" Do you see that pile of bricks in the yard?" 

" Yes, sir." 

" Pile them up in the other end of the yard." 

He did it. The work was done, and well done. He said 
to Mr. Girard: 

" Can you give me work to-morrow? " 

" Yes, come back." 

The next morning he came back, and Mr. Girard told him 
to go and pile up the bricks where they were at first. He did 
it without a word, and at night asked if he could have more 
work. 

" Yes, come again." 

And he came and was bidden to pile the bricks up again. 
And Girard kept him piling up the bricks here and there, until 
he found out that he was just the man he wanted — a man 
who would obey. 

One day he said to him: 

" There is to be a large auction sale of sugar, and I want 
you to go down to the wharf and bid it in for me." 



A WONDERFUL APPEAL. 63! 

People laughed at the green Irishman's bidding, but finally 
the sugar was sold to him. 

" Who is to pay for this?" said the auctioneer, gruffly. 

" Mr. Girard, sir." 

" Are you Mr. Girard's agent?" 

" Yes, sir." 

They scraped and bowed, and he was a great man in their 
estimation then. Girard had found a man he could trust; God 
wants to find a man He can trust. Obedience is prompt, 
cheerful, willing action. Do what God wants you to do with- 
out asking any questions. 

The first time I went to Europe, the Hon. Geo. L. Stuart 
said, " Be sure and go to Edinburgh and attend the General 
Assembly. Dr. Duff is to be present, and if he makes a speech 
on Foreign Missions, you can't afford to miss it." I heard 
that speech. I shall never forget it. I went from London to 
Edinburgh, four hundred miles, and I didn't think much of 
the money either, and I spent a week there. That man had fire. 
If there is a man who has fire, get near to him. He had 
concentrated his life upon one thing, the Missionary work in 
India, and that was what made his influence so mighty. Dr. 
Duff once stood for nearly an hour and a half before the Gen- 
eral Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, made up of six 
or eight hundred ministers of Scotland, and the finest men in 
the country, and plead for India with all the power that God 
gave him. At last he fainted away, and they carried him into 
the vestibule, and worked over him for some time. When he 
came to, he said: 

"Where am I?" 

" In the Free Assembly Hall." 

' Yes, yes, I remember, I was making a plea for India. I 
hadn't quite finished my speech. Take me back." 

" Doctor Duff, if you go back, you will do it at the peril of 
your life." 

" Oh, I beg of you to take me back. The General Assem- 
bly breaks up to-night. They will not meet again for twelve 



632 THE POWER OF ENTHUSIASM. 

months. It is my last opportunity. Take me back, and let 
me finish that speech. I shall die if I do not." 

He had white hair and a venerable beard, and he was so 
weak that two men had to help him up on the platform. 
When the elders saw him, they all arose, and as he pleaded 
they burst into tears. The veteran missionary stood with his 
hand on the rail, faint and exhausted, and finished his speech. 
He said: 

" Is it true, fathers and mothers of Scotland, that you have 
no more sons to give to India? When Queen Victoria wants 
men to go there, hundreds of men volunteer and are anxious 
to go, and their parents buy a commission and give their sons 
to the army of India. And here is the Lord Jesus calling for 
volunteers; there is the money to send them, but there are no 
men. Fathers and mothers say they don't want their sons 
exposed to the diseases of India, and are afraid they will lose 
them. Is it true that Scotland has no more sons to give for 
India? If it is true, although I have come back in my old 
age with a shattered constitution, to die with my family, if it 
is true that Scotland has no more sons to give, I will pack up 
to-morrow and be off to the banks of the Ganges, and let the 
people of India know that there is one poor old Scotchman 
who can die for them." 

That is what I call fire and enthusiasm. And it was not 
long after that that all the men they could send volunteered 
to go. 

It is said cf Napoleon that after one of his great battles 
he had some medals struck off, with a record of the battle on 
one side, and on the other side the words " I WAS THERE." 
The old veterans would take out these medals and proudly 
show them, and say, " I WAS THERE." They were proud 
cf the fact that they were in the thickest of the fight. My 
friends, the battle of life will soon be over; the conflict done. 
With many of us it will be a great thing when the strife is over 
to say, " I WAS THERE." 



BORN OF THE SPIRIT. 6$$ 

NINE NEW THINGS FOR THE CHRISTIAN. 

A man must have a NEW HEART before he can serve 
God. It is a calamity for men or women to become church 
members before they are born of the Spirit. I think a good 
many people are in bondage and darkness to-day because they 
made that fatal mistake. They joined the church, were bap- 
tized, and confirmed; they partake of the Lord's Supper, and 
think that observing the Lord's ordinances is the new birth. 
All these are right in their place, but when you put them in the 
place of salvation, or the new birth, it is then that you make a 
woeful mistake. Profession is not conversion. A beggar 
may put on a good coat — he is a beggar still. A man may 
have leprosy, and cover it up, and be a leper still. Conversion 
is being " born from above," " born of God," " born again." 
I beg you not to be deceived, and build your hopes of Heaven 
upon a false foundation. What you want is to be sure that 
you start right; that you have been " born of the Spirit." 

Some may say, " I don't know when or where old things 
passed away; because I can't set the day and the hour when I 
was converted, I am not sure that I am converted." I don't 
think I would cross the street to find out when I was converted; 
but I would go around the world to find out if I was con- 
verted. Bishop Simpson said that he was led to Christ by a 
godly mother before he was four years old. He could not 
remember when he was brought into the Kingdom of God. 
It is not necessary to tell when and where, but it is important 
to know that " old things have passed away." The Scotch 
lassie said "either I have changed, or Scotland has," because 
all things looked different to her. The sun shone brighter, 
the heather was sweeter, and the Scotch air was a good deal 
purer. 

I remember a man who got up in one of our meetings in 
New York; he had just been converted, and his face shone. 
He said, " I am a new man in the same old clothes." Well, 
he was a " new man," a new creature in Christ Jesus. People 
are sometimes anxious to get into their " new clothes," but 



634 NOT PATCHES > BUT A NEW NATURE. 

they want to keep the " old man." If you are trying to help 
people, don't be so anxious to " dress them up " outside as to 
dress them up inside. Get the heart right, and everything else 
will come right. 

A man bought a farm on which he found an old pump, and 
he began pumping. A neighbor came along and said: 

" Look here, my friend, don't drink that water, it's impure. 
The man who lived here before used water from that well, and 
it poisoned him, and his wife, and all his children." 

"Is that so?" said the man; "Well, I'll soon make that 
right." 

And he got some paint and painted the pump, puttied up 
all the holes, and filled up the cracks, and he had a very fine 
looking pump. And he said: 

" Now I am sure it is all right." 

But you would say : " What a fool ; only to paint the pump 
when the water is bad." Yet that is just like what a man is 
doing who is trying to save himself. It is not a new pump 
that is wanted; it is new water. Make the fountain good and 
the stream will be good. It is new hearts that men want. 

A friend once showed me a brownstone house which was 
built by contract while the owner was in Europe. After he 
moved into it he found that only the front had been built of 
stone, while the sides were built of brick, and plastered over 
so as to look exactly like the brownstone. The first winter's 
frost cracked off the plaster, and the next spring the man had 
to patch it all over. He kept on doing this for several years, 
but at last he got disgusted, took down all the plastered walls, 
and had them rebuilt with stone. A great many men are 
trying to patch up the " old Adam." They say they are going 
to begin a new life, and they begin to patch up the old nature, 
and they are worse than they were before. It is a new crea- 
tion that is needed. A man, if born from above, is a new 
creature. 

I have been a Christian for more than forty years, and I 
find myself still putting off the old things. I shall probably 



GIVING WAY TO THE OLD NATURE. 635 

find, if I am living - ten years from now, that I shall not do 
some things I am doing now. We must get nearer to the 
cross. If a man is born of God, he is become a new creature; 
he has a new nature. Here is the vital point. I was a riddle 
to myself the first few years I was converted. I thought God 
took away the old nature entirely. When God converts a 
man He does not take away the old nature, He gives him a 
new nature. Every man has two natures. He has a higher 
and a lower, a carnal and a spiritual, a fleshly and a heavenly, 
an earthly and a glorified nature. That is the teaching of the 
Bible, and it is a vital point. 

You will often find the best Christians doing strange things. 
Why? Because they have given way to the old nature. The 
horse has but one nature, and he is true to it. The sheep, the 
ox, are true to their natures. But a child of God has two 
natures, one a deceitful, corrupt, and carnal nature, the other 
a heavenly nature, received when we are born of God, and are 
thus made partakers of the divine nature. Now I never had 
any serious conflict with myself until I got the new nature; 
then the warfare began. I thought I was a pretty good man. 
You will find a great many who think they are first-rate men. 
They do not have any conflicts. Why? Because they think 
they are all right. They know nothing about their bad nature. 

Bring an unrenewed man into one of our meetings and he 
will very likely say, " What in the world are all these people 
here for? This meeting is as dry as dust to me." But a man 
with a heavenly nature says, " This is food to my soul. I 
understand it.' 1 There's the two natures. One man said it 
was as if one foot wanted to go one way and the other 
foot the other way, and he couldn't get on. You have got to 
crucify one nature. Men either give way to their corrupt and 
deceitful nature, or else they put off the old man and put on 
the new man. Now, I have had people say to me, " You talk 
about a conflict. T don't know anything about that." ( )f 
course they don't. No man will have a conflict with himself 
about these higher things until he is " born from above." 



636 CONFLICT A PROOF OF LIFE. 

You have heard the story of the Judge and the old slave 
who used to talk with him about his spiritual conflicts. One 
day the Judge said: 

" Sambo, how is it you Christians are always talking about 
your fights with the devil, and the conflicts you have with the 
powers of darkness? I don't have any conflict with the devil. 
I don't have any of these ' fightings ' that you speak of, and 
yet I am an infidel. How do you account for it?" And he 
floored the poor negro, who did not know just how to meet 
the argument. 

The Judge was a sportsman, and one day when they came 
upon a lot of wild ducks in the water he blazed away at them, 
wounding one duck and killing another. 

" Sambo," he said, " jump in and get that wounded duck." 

Sambo rushed in and got the duck, and found his illustra- 
tion. 

" Judge," he said, " I think I understand dat question we 
were discussin' better than I did befo'. Don't you know de 
minute you wounded dat duck how anxious you was to git 
him, and you didn't care nothin' about de dead duck until 
after you had saved de wounded one? Well, I'm only a 
wounded duck, and I'm all de time trying to get away from 
de devil. But you're a dead duck — he's got you, anyho^v. ,, 

Let a man forsake sin and quit his old associates, and every 
hound in hell will be let loose upon him. Let a man say, 
" I've drunk my last drop of liquor," and he will have a con- 
flict and a fight then and there, within and without. There 
will be a battle. There is a higher and lower nature in every 
one born of the Spirit. If you haven't " conflicts," you 
haven't been " born of the Spirit." 

Get a NEW NAME. When a child is born, the next thing- 
is to name it. If we are true children of God, we are sons of 
the Most High God. " Thou shalt be called by a new name, 
which the mouth of the Lord shall name." The " family " 
name is a pretty good name, after all. Don't bring disgrace 
upon it; don't tarnish it. It is said of Alexander that they 



NEW AND PRECIOUS GIFTS. 637 

wanted him to run a foot race, and he said he would if he 
were not the son of a King; but he thought his name might 
be injured if he ran a race with common people. Let us re- 
member that we are the sons and daughters of the King; that 
our Father is the God of Heaven and earth. 

A woman once said she wouldn't go to hear me preach 
again because I was a millionaire; she declared that I said my 
father was " very rich." Talk about millions — I'm away up 
beyond that. Stop at "millions"? My father owns all the 
banks in the world, all the silver and the gold, and " the cattle 
on a thousand hills " are His. I can't tell you how rich I am. 
You can all become " millionaires " if I am one. Get a " New 
Name." If you are not a child of God, make up your mind 
that you will become such. 

Another thing we get is a NEW WAY. I have no sym- 
pathy with those who stay in old ways, and around old haunts. 
Christ says, " I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no 
man cometh unto the Father, but by me." The only way — 
the only one safe to follow — is Jesus Christ. 

Another thing we get is a NEW TONGUE. If a man is 
born of God he has a new tongue, and he will not slander 
people. Many a man has gone to his grave with a broken 
heart, because he has been slandered and lied about, perhaps 
by those who professed to be his friends. 

Then God gives us a NEW SONG. When God converts 
men, He puts a new song in their souls. When the Israelites 
passed safely through the Red Sea, they sung a Song of Re- 
demption. But, thank God, that song has been increasing 
ever since they were in the Wilderness, and every true child of 
God will begin to sing it. They can't help it. You will not 
want to sing of earth ; you will want to sing of Heaven. Did 
you ever hear of a skeptic who, when dying, wanted to have a 
worldly song sung to him? But how often dying Christians 
have asked their friends to sin£ — 



638 OUR NEW JOYS. 

"Jesus, lover of my soul, 

Let me to Thy bosom fly, 
While the nearer waters roll, 

While the tempest still is high; 
Hide me, O my Saviour, hide, 

Till the storm of life is past; 
Safe into the haven guide, 

Oh, receive my soul at last." 

In one of our hospitals a lady who was dying asked me to 
sing that hymn to her. I quoted the words, and I tried to sing 
them, but I broke down. At last the dying woman tried to 
sing the hymn herself, but before she got through the words 
died away on her lips, and she passed " Safe into the haven." 

I expect to hear the hallelujahs of Heaven, and I expect to 
sing as well as any of them up there. If we have been " born 
of God/' we can't help singing the '* New Song." One of 
the sins of this backsliding world is to hire people and put 
them into the organ loft, and have them do all the singing. 
When a man has been forgiven he wants to praise his God. 
" He hath put a new song in my mouth." 

If a man is born of God he will want NEW FOOD for his 
new nature. He will want something better than Sunday 
newspapers and dime novels to " kill time." The Bible, and 
hundreds of good books, will help him forward and help him 
upward. 

And then we shall have NEW FRIENDS. I do not be- 
lieve a man is converted unless he wants to make new friends. 
I believe a man who is born of God will want to go into the 
church. When a man is born of God he will change his 
society very soon; he will get away from the scoffers and un- 
believers, and he will want to identify himself with the children 
of God, and so he will have new friends. I thank God, every 
day of my life, for the friends that I have all over Christendom. 
They are friends who will stand by me. I pity the man who 
must go off among unbelievers to find his true friends. 

By and by we shall have a NEW BODY. We shall have 
a body fashioned like unto His glorious body, like that of the 



LIFTED HIGHER. 639 

Son of God. And we shall have a NEW HOME. He has 
gone up on high to prepare it. Thank God for the outlook. 
It is better farther on. We have only a taste of what we are 
going to have. 



The time has come for us to part. I can't tell you what 
precious hours we have spent here. I think every day of 
my Christian life grows better and better. I have tried to 
serve God for many years, and every year seems better than 
any other. If you will cling to Him you will find that even 
His yoke is easy, and that every year it grows easier. Cleave 
to Him and He'll lift you higher and higher. To those who 
ascend in balloons objects on the earth grow smaller and 
smaller; so when we become full of spiritual things we care 
less and less for the things of earth. Go on to higher and 
higher things, continue to get nearer and nearer to God. I 
remember a few years ago a little child died, and just before 
his soul went home he asked his weeping father to lift him up; 
and the father put his hand under the head of the child and 
raised it up. But the little one said: 

"That is not enough, father; lift me right up." 

The child was wasted to skin and bones, but his father 
tenderly complied, and lifted the dying one right out of bed. 
But the little fellow kept whispering, fainter and fainter, 

" Lift me higher, father, higher, higher! " 

And the father lifted him higher and higher, till he lifted 
him as high as he could reach. Still the barely audible whis- 
per came, 

" Higher, father, higher," till at last his head fell back, 
and his spirit passed up to the eternal King — high at last. 

So, my dear friends, let your constant cry be higher, 
higher, ever nearer to the cross of Christ. 

Now, as an old gentleman attending a convention in the 






640 



GOOD NIGHT. 



country could not bring himself to say farewell to his beloved 
hearers — the word seemed to choke him — and he could only 
manage to say with faltering speech, " I bid you good night," 
just so I cannot say good-bye, farewell, to you — and yet we 
must part. I must leave you, and in his words I merely say 
to you " Good night." Dawn will come up yonder, and 
though never perhaps before that, I expect to meet you in the 
resurrection hour. So I bid you " Good night," and by the 
grace of God we shall meet in the morning. 




LEAp?9 



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